1949, a momentous year! A year that saw the
publication of George Orwell’s monumental classic
1984. A year that saw the birth of the magazine
which would become The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction. A year during which the first of the
‘Best Of’ anthologies hit the market. What better
way to go back in time and experience the excitement
of the burgeoning new Science Fiction genre than
with some of the greats as they saw it themselves:
Arthur C. Clarke, Edmond Hamilton, Clifford D.
Simak, C.M. Kombluth, Theodore Sturgeon, Ray
Bradbury, James H. Schmitz, our own Isaac Asimov
and more!
We offer you your own little time machine . . .
Bon Voyage!
Anthologies from DAW
include
ASIMOV PRESENTS THE GREAT SF STORIES
The best stories of the last four decades.
Edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg.
THE ANNUAL WORLD’S BEST SF
The best of the current year.
Edited by Donald A. Wollheim with Arthur W. Saha.
THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES
An annual of gooseflesh tales.
Edited by Karl Edward Wagner.
THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY STORIES
An annual of high imagination.
Edited by Arthur W. Saha.
TERRA SF
The best SF from Western Europe.
Edited by Richard D. Nolane.
ISAAC ASIMOV
-PRESENTS-
THE GREAT
SCIENCE FICTION
STORIES
Volume 11, 1949
Edited by
Isaac Asimov and
Martin H. Greenberg
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER
1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Copyright ©, 1984, by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg.
All Rights Reserved.
Complete list of copyright acknowledgements for the contents will be
found on the following page.
Cover design by One Plus One Studios.
Cover art by Michelangelo Miani.
First Printing, March 1984
123456789
I CD O K S
PRINTED IN U.S.A
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. MARCA
REGISTRADA. HECHO EN U.S.A.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Asimov—Copyright © 1949 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.;
copyright renewed © 1976 by Isaac Asimov. Reprinted by permis¬
sion of the author.
MacDonald—Copyright© 1976 by John D. MacDonald Publishing,
Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Padgett—Copyright © 1949, Renewed by Catherine Moore Kuttner.
Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
Phillips—Copyright © 1949 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, the Scott
Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Ave., New York,
NY 10022.
Padgett (Prisoner in the Skull)—Copyright © 1949, Renewed 1977
by Catherine Moore Kuttner. Reprinted by permission of Don
Congdon Associates, Inc.
Hamilton—Copyright © 1949 by Standard Magazines. Reprinted
by permission of the agents for the author’s estate, the Scott
Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Ave., New York,
NY 10022.
Clarke—Copyright © 1949 by Standard Magazines; copyright
renewed. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents,
the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Ave., New
York, NY 10022.
Simak—Copyright © 1949 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc;
copyright renewed by the author. Reprinted by permission of
Kirby McCauley, Ltd.
Kombluth—Copyright © 1949 by Standard Magazines. Reprinted
by permission of Robert P. Mills, Ltd.
MacDonald, Philip—Copyright © 1949, Mercury Press, Inc.
Sturgeon—Copyright © 1949 by Mercury Press, Inc; copyright
renewed. Reprinted by permission of the author and Kirby
McCauley, Ltd.
Bradbury—Copyright © 1949, Renewed 1977 by Ray Bradbury.
Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.
MacLean—Copyright © 1949 by Street & Smith Publications,
Inc., 1962 by Katherine MacLean; reprinted by permission of the
author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.
Kuttner—Copyright © 1949, Renewed 1977 by Catherine Moore
Kuttner. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates,
Inc.
Schmitz—Copyright © 1949 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the agents for the author's estate, the
Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Ave., New
York, NY 10022.
Contents
Introduction 9
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE by Isaac Asimov 12
FLAW by John D. MacDonald 36
PRIVATE EYE by Lewis Padgett 45
MANNA by Peter Phillips 73
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL by Lewis Padgett 98
ALIEN EARTH by Edmond Hamilton 135
HISTORY LESSON by Arthur C. Clarke 160
ETERNITY LOST by Clifford D. Simak 169
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN by C. M. Kombluth 196
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT by Philip MacDonald 207
THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST
by Theodore Sturgeon 223
KALEIDOSCOPE by Ray Bradbury 232
DEFENSE MECHANISM by Katherine MacLean 242
COLD WAR by Henry Kuttner 251
THE WITCHES OF KARRES by James H. Schmitz 776
1949,INTRODUCTION
In the world outside reality it was a most important year, one
that saw the Soviet Union detonate a nuclear weapon and the
victory of the Communists in China. On January 20 President
Truman urged in “Point Four” of his inaugural address that the
United States share its technological and scientific knowledge
with “underprivileged areas.” NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) came into being formally on April 4 and would
soon be a major factor in American foreign policy. The Republic
of Eire officially came into existence on April 18. In a relatively
rare state name-change, Siam became Thailand on May 11, one
day before the Berlin blockade was ended by the Soviets. West
(the German Federal Republic) and East (the German Democratic
Republic) Germany were established on May 23 and October 7.
The defeated Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek be¬
gan to evacuate their remaining forces to Formosa on July 16;
the People’s Republic of China, ruled by Mao Tse-tung and
Chou En-lai, was proclaimed on October 1.
President Truman announces on September 23 that the Soviets
have successfully tested a nuclear weapon.
The American domestic economy undergoes a series of major
strikes, including a bitter dispute in the coal fields. Congress
raises the minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour.
During 1949 Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex , a
work that greatly influenced the postwar feminist movement.
The great Selman Waksman isolated neomycin, giving yet an¬
other important antibiotic to the world. Jackie Robinson was the
Most Valuable Player in the National League, batting an impres¬
sive .342, while Ralph Kiner led the majors in home runs with
54. Hit songs included “Dear Hearts and Gentle People,” “I
9
10
Introduction
Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine,” “ Scarlet Ribbons,” and
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
The Volkswagen automobile was introduced in the American
market but it got off to a very slow start—only two were sold in
1949. A gallon of gas cost 25 cents. Marc Chagall painted “Red
Sun,” while The Goldbergs , sometimes called American TV’s
first situation comedy, became a hit. Joe Louis retired as heavy¬
weight boxing champion and Ezzard Charles became the new
champ by defeating Jersey Joe Walcott. Nelson Algren published
his powerful The Man with the Golden Arm , while important and
popular films included Adam's Rib , the tremendous White Heat ,
All the King's Men , Sands of Iwo Jima, Twelve O'Clock High
(war pictures were particularly popular), and She Wore a Yellow
Ribbon.
Pancho Gonzales was U.S. Tennis Champion. Anai's Nin pub¬
lished The House of Incest. Top Broadway musicals included
South Pacific starring Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin, and Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, with the wonderful Carol Channing. Ponder won
the Kentucky Derby. Jacob Epstein produced his sculpture of
“Lazarus.” Silly Putty was introduced and became a big success.
The New York Yankees won the World Series by beating the
Brooklyn Dodgers (sorry again, Isaac) four games to one. A pack
of cigarettes cost 21 cents. The legitimate stage was graced by
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and Detective Story by
Sidney Kingsley. Graham Greene published The Third Man.
Amos 'n Andy came to television.
A loaf of bread cost 15 cents. The National Football League
and the All-America Conference merged, bringing the Cleveland
Browns into the NFL, which they were to dominate for the next
decade. Alger Hiss was convicted of spying against the United
States for the Soviet Union.
The record for the mile run was still the 4:01.4 set by Gunder
Haegg of Sweden in 1945.
Mel Brooks was (probably) still Melvin Kaminsky.
In the real world it was another outstanding year as a large
number of excellent (along with a few not so excellent) science
fiction and fantasy novels and collections were published (again,
many of these had been serialized years earlier in the magazines),
including the titanic 1984 by George Orwell, Lords of Creation
by Eando Binder, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum,
Exiles of Time by Nelson Bond, Skylark of Valeron by E. E.
(Doc) Smith, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, The Fox
Woman by A. Merritt, The Incredible Planet by John W.
INTRODUCTION
11
Campbell, Jr., Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein, The Sunken
World by Stanton A. Coblentz, and The Star Kings by Edmond
Hamilton. Two important anthologies were The Best Science
Fiction Stories , 1949 , the first annual “Best of’ anthology,
edited by E. F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, and The Girl with the
Hungry Eyes and Other Stories , one of the first “original
anthologies,” edited by our own Donald A. Wollheim.
Important novels that appeared in magazines in 1949 included
Seetee Shock by Jack Williamson, Flight into Yesterday by
Charles L. Harness, and Needle by Hal Clement.
Super Science Fiction reappeared on the newsstands, this time
edited by Eijer Jacobsson. Other sf magazines that began publica¬
tion in 1949 were Other Worlds Science Stories , edited by
Raymond A. Palmer, and A. Merritt*s Fantasy Magazine .
However, all these paled beside the launching in October of The
Magazine of Fantasy, published by Mercury Press and edited by
Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas—with its name changed
to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , it would soon
become a major rival to Astounding and certainly one of the
most important sf magazines of all time.
More wondrous things were happening in the real world as
five writers made their maiden voyages into reality: in February,
John Christopher (Christopher Youd) with “Christmas Tree”; in
July, Kris Neville with “The Hand From the Stars”; in the Fall
issue of Planet Stories , Roger Dee with “The Wheel is Death”;
in October, Katherine MacLean with “Defense Mechanism”;
and in the Winter issue of Planet Stories , Jerome Bixby, with
“Tubemonkey. ”
Gnome Press, under the leadership of David Kyle and Martin
Greenberg (the other Marty Greenberg) began publication dur¬
ing 1949. The Captain Video TV series took to the airways.
The real people gathered together for the seventh time as the
World Science Fiction Convention (Cinvention) was held in
Cincinnati. Notable sf films of the year were Mighty Joe Young
and The Perfect Woman , the latter based on a play by Wallace
Geoffrey and Basil Mitchell.
Death took Arthur Leo Zagat at the age of 54.
But distant wings were beating as Malcolm Edwards was
bom.
Let us travel back to that honored year of 1949 and enjoy the
best stories that the real world bequeathed to us.
THE REP QUEEN’S RACE
By Isaac Asimov (1920— )
Astounding Science Fiction , January
Marty Greenberg does have a tendency to pick my stories for
this series. Not all of them, of course, but more than / think
he ought to. Unfortunately, he insists on having the sole vote
in this matter. He says / am too prejudiced to vote, which is
ridiculous on the face of it. However, / don’t dare do anything
to offend him, for he does all the skutwork in this series
(Xeroxing stories, getting permissions, paying out checks,
etc.) and does it most efficiently. If he quit on me, there
would be no chance whatever of an adequate replacement ,
And then having picked a story, he refuses to write a
headnote for it. He insists that / do the job alone.
Well, what can / say about “The Red Queen’s Race”?
1. / wrote it after nearly a year’s layoff from writing be¬
cause / was working very hard to get my Ph.D. Once l got it,
/ went back to writing at once (with RQR as a result) and
since then / have never had a sizable writing hiatus (or even a
minor one) in my life.
2. Someone once said to me, ‘ 7 didn’t know you ever wrote
a tough-guy detective story.” I said, “/ never have.” He
said, ' 'How about 'The Red Queen’s Race’ ?’ ’—so I read it and
it certainly sounds tough-guy detective. I’ve never been able
to explain that.
3. If you were planning to write anyway (I wouldn’t ask you
if you weren’t) do write to Marty to the effect that you loved
this story. I want him to think highly of himself and of his
expertise, and not even dream of quitting the team. — I.A.
Here’s a puzzle for you, if you like. Is it a crime to translate a
chemistry textbook into Greek?
12
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
13
Or let’s put it another way. If one of the country’s largest
atomic power plants is completely ruined in an unauthorized
experiment, is an admitted accessory to that act a criminal?
These problems only developed with time, of course. We
started with the atomic power plant—drained. I really mean
drained . I don’t know exactly how large the fissionable power
source was—but in two flashing microseconds, it had all fissioned.
No explosion. No undue gamma ray density. It was merely
that every moving part in the entire structure was fused. The
entire main building was mildly hot. The atmosphere for two
miles in every direction was gently warm. Just a dead, useless
building which later on took a hundred million dollars to replace.
It happened about three in the morning, and they found Elmer
Tywood alone in the central source chamber. The findings of
twenty-four close-packed hours can be summarized quickly.
1. Elmer Tywood—Ph.D., Sc.D., Fellow of This and Honor¬
ary That, one-time youthful participant of the original Manhattan
Project, and now full Professor of Nuclear Physics—was no
interloper. He had a Class-A Pass—Unlimited. But no record
could be found as to his purpose in being there just then. A table
on casters contained equipment which had not been made on any
recorded requisition. It, too, was a single fused mass—not quite
too hot to touch.
2. Elmer Tywood was dead. He lay next to the table; his face
congested, nearly black. No radiation effect. No external force
of any sort. The doctor said apoplexy.
3. In Elmer Tywood’s office safe were found two puzzling
items: i.e. twenty foolscap sheets of apparent mathematics, and a
bound folio in a foreign language which turned out to be Greek,
the subject matter, on translation, turning out to be chemistry.
The secrecy which poured over the whole mess was something
so terrific as to make everything that touched it, dead . It’s the
only word that can describe it. Twenty-seven men and women,
all told, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of
Science, and two or three others so top-notch that they were
completely unknown to the public entered the power plant during
the period of investigation. Any man who had been in the plant
that night, the physicist who had identified Tywood, the doctor
who had examined him, were retired into virtual home arrest.
No newspaper ever got the story. No inside dopester got it. A
few members of Congress got part of it.
And naturally so! Anyone or any group or any country that
could suck all the available energy out of the equivalent of
perhaps fifty to a hundred pounds of plutonium without explod-
14
Isaac Asimov
ing it, had America’s industry and America’s defense so snugly
in the palm of the hand that the light and life of one hundred sixty
million people could be turned off between yawns.
Was it Tywood? Or Tywood and others? Or just others,
through Tywood?
And my job? I was a decoy; or front man, if you like.
Someone has to hang around the university and ask questions
about Tywood. After all, he was missing. It could be amnesia, a
hold-up, a kidnapping, a killing, a runaway, insanity, accident—I
could busy myself with that for five years and collect black
looks, and maybe divert attention. To be sure, it didn’t work out
that way.
But don’t think I was in on the whole case at the start. I
wasn’t one of the twenty-seven men I mentioned a while back,
though my boss was. But I knew a little—enough to get started.
Professor John Keyser was also in Physics. I didn’t get to him
right away. There was a good deal of routine to cover first in as
conscientious a way as I could. Quite meaningless. Quite necessary.
But I was in Keyser’s office now.
Professors* offices are distinctive. Nobody dusts them except
some tired cleaning woman who hobbles in and out at eight in
the morning, and the professor never notices the dust anyway.
Lots of books without much arrangement. The ones close to the
desk are used a lot—lectures are copied out of them. The ones
out of reach are wherever a student put them back after borrow¬
ing them. Then there are professional journals that look cheap
and are darned expensive, which are waiting about and which
may some day be read. And plenty of paper on the desk; some of
it scribbled on.
Keyser was an elderly man—one of Tywood’s generation. His
nose was big and rather red, and he smoked a pipe. He had that
easy-going and nonpredatory look in his eyes that goes with an
academic job—either because that kind of job attracts that kind
of man or because that kind of job makes that kind of man.
I said: “What kind of work is Professor Tywood doing?’’
“Research physics. ’’
Answers like that bounce off me. Some years ago they used to
get me mad. Now, I just said: “We know that, professor. It’s the
details I’m after.*’
And he twinkled at me tolerantly: “Surely the details can’t
help much unless you’re a research physicist yourself. Does it
matter—under the circumstances?’’
“Maybe not. But-he’s gone. If anything’s happened to him in
the way of”—I gestured, and deliberately clinched—“foul play.
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
15
his work may have something to do with it—unless he’s rich and
the motive is money.”
Keyser chuckled dryly: “College professors are never rich.
The commodity we peddle is but lightly considered, seeing how
large the supply is.”
I ignored that, too, because I know my looks are against me.
Actually, I finished college with a “very good” translated into
Latin so that the college president could understand it, and never
played in a football game in my life. But I look rather the
reverse.
1 said: “Then we’re left with his work to consider.”
“You mean spies? International intrigue?”
“Why not? It’s happened before! After all, he’s a nuclear
physicist, isn’t he?”
“He is. But so are others. So am I.”
“Ah, but perhaps he knows something you don’t.”
There was a stiffening to the jaw. When caught off-guard,
professors can act just like people. He said, stiffly: “As I recall
off-hand, Tywood has published papers on the effect of liquid
viscosity on the wings of the Rayleigh line, on higher-orbit field
equation, and on spin-orbit coupling of two nucleons, but his
main work is on quadrupole moments. I am quite competent in
these matters.”
“Is he working on quadrupole moments now?” I tried not to
bat an eye, and I think I succeeded.
“Yes—in a way.” He almost sneered, “He may be getting to
the experimental stage finally. He’s spent most of his life, it
seems, working out the mathematical consequences of a special
theory of his own.”
“Like this,” and I tossed a sheet of foolscap at him.
That sheet was one of those in the safe in Tywood’s office.
The chances, of course, were that the bundle meant nothing, if
only because it was a professor’s safe. That is, things are some¬
times put in at the spur of the moment because the logical drawer
was filled with unmarked exam papers. And, of course, nothing
is ever taken out. We had found in that safe dusty little vials of
yellowish crystals with scarcely legible labels, some mimeo¬
graphed booklets dating back to World War II and marked
“Restricted,” a copy of an old college yearbook, and some
correspondence concerning a possible position as Director of
Research for American Electric, dated ten years back, and, of
course, chemistry in Greek.
The foolscap was there, too. It was rolled up like a college
diploma with a rubber band about it and had no label or descrip-
16
Isaac Asimov
tive title. Some twenty sheets were covered with ink marks,
meticulous and small—
I had one sheet of that foolscap. I don’t think any one man in
the world had more than one sheet. And I’m sure that no man in
the world but one knew that the loss of his particular sheet and of
his particular life would be as nearly simultaneous as the govern¬
ment could make it.
So I tossed the sheet at Keyser, as if it were something I’d
found blowing about the campus.
He stared at it and then looked at the back side, which was
blank. His eyes moved down from the top to the bottom, then
jumped back to the top.
“I don’t know what this is about,” he said, and the words
seemed sour to his own taste.
I didn’t say anything. Just folded the paper and shoved it back
into the inside jacket pocket.
Keyser added petulantly: “It’s a fallacy you laymen have that
scientists can look at an equation and say, ‘Ah, yes—’ and go on
to write a book about it. Mathematics has no existence of its
own. It is merely an arbitrary code devised to describe physical
observations or philosophical concepts. Every man can adapt it
to his own particular needs. For instance no one can look at a
symbol and be sure of what it means. So far, science has used
every letter in the alphabet, large, small and italic, each symbol¬
izing many different things. They have used bold-faced letters,
Gothic-type letters, Greek letters, both capital and small, subscripts,
superscripts, asterisks, even Hebrew letters. Different scientists
use different symbols for the same concept and the same symbol
for different concepts. So if you show a disconnected page like
this to any man, without information as to the subject being
investigated or the particular symbology used, he could abso¬
lutely not make sense out of it. ’ *
I interrupted: ‘‘But you said he was working on quadrupole
moments. Does that make this sensible?” and I tapped the spot
on my chest where the foolscap had been slowly scorching a hole
in my jacket for two days.
‘‘I can’t tell. I saw none of the standard relationships that I’d
expect to be involved. At least I recognized none. But I obvi¬
ously can’t commit myself.”
There was a short silence, then he said: ‘‘I’ll tell you. Why
don’t you check with his students?”
I lifted my eyebrows: ‘‘You mean in his classes?”
He seemed annoyed: ‘‘No, for Heaven’s sake. His research
students! His doctoral candidates! They’ve been working with
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
17
him. They’ll know the details of that work better than I, or
anyone in the faculty, could possibly know it.”
“It’s an idea,” I said, casually. It was, too. I don’t know
why, but I wouldn’t have thought of it myself. I guess it’s
because it’s only natural to think that any professor knows more
than any student.
Keyser latched on to a lapel as I rose to leave. “And, besides,”
he said, “I think you’re on the wrong track. This is in confidence,
you understand, and I wouldn’t say it except for the unusual
circumstances, but Tywood is not thought of too highly in the
profession. Oh, he’s an adequate teacher, I’ll admit, but his
research papers have never commanded respect. There has al¬
ways been a tendency towards vague theorizing, unsupported by
experimental evidence. That paper of yours is probably more of
it. No one could possibly want to . . . er, kidnap him because of
it.”
“Is that so? I see. Any ideas, yourself, as to why he’s gone,
or where he’s gone?”
“Nothing concrete,” he said pursing his lips, “but everyone
knows he is a sick man. He had a stroke two years ago that kept
him out of classes for a semester. He never did get well. His left
side was paralyzed for a while and he still limps. Another stroke
would kill him. It could come any time.”
“You think he’s dead, then?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“But where’s the body, then?”
“Well, really— That is your job, I think.”
It was, and I left.
I interviewed each one of Tywood’s four research students in a
volume of chaos called a research laboratory. These student
research laboratories usually have two hopefuls working therein,
said two constituting a floating population, since every year or so
they are alternately replaced.
Consequently, the laboratory has its equipment stack in tiers.
On the laboratory benches is the equipment immediately being
used, and in three or four of the handiest drawers are replace¬
ments or supplements which are likely to be used. In the farther
drawers, in the shelves reaching up to the ceiling, in odd comers,
are fading remnants of the past student generations—oddments never
used and never discarded. It is claimed, in fact, that no research
student ever knew all the contents of his laboratory.
All four of Tywood’s students were worried. But three were
worried mainly by their own status. That is, by the possible
18
Isaac Asimov
effect the absence of Tywood might have on the status of their
“problem.” I dismissed those three—who all have their degrees
now, I hope—and called back the fourth.
He had the most haggard look of all, and had been least
communicative—which I considered a hopeful sign.
He now sat stiffly in the straight-backed chair at the right of
the desk, while I leaned back in a creaky old swivel-chair and
pushed my hat off my forehead. His name was Edwin Howe and
he did get his degree later on. I know that for sure, because he’s
a big wheel in the Department of Science now.
I said: “You do the same work the other boys do, I suppose?”
“It’s all nuclear work in a way.”
“But it’s not all exactly the same?”
He shook his head slowly. “We take different angles. You
have to have something clear-cut, you know, or you won’t be
able to publish. We’ve got to get our degrees.”
He said it exacdy the way you or I might say, “We’ve got to
make a living.” At that, maybe it’s the same thing for them.
I said: “All right. What’s your angle?”
He said: “I do the math. I mean, with Professor Tywood.”
“What kind of math?”
And he smiled a little, getting the same sort of atmosphere
about him that I had noticed in Professor Keyser’s case that
morning. A sort of, “Do-you-really-think-I-can-explain-aU-my-
profound-thoughts-to-stupid-little-you?” sort of atmosphere.
All he said aloud, however, was: “That would be rather
complicated to explain.”
“I’ll help you,” I said. “Is that anything like it?” And I
tossed the foolscap sheet at him.
He didn’t give it any once over. He just snatched it up and let
out a thin wail: “Where’d you get this?”
“From Tywood’s safe.”
“Do you have the rest of it, too?”
“It’s safe,” I hedged.
He relaxed a little—just a little: “You didn’t show it to
anybody, did you?”
“I showed it to Professor Keyser.”
Howe made an impolite sound with his lower lip and front
teeth, "That jackass. What did he say?”
I turned the palms of my hands upward and Howe laughed.
Then he said, in an offhand manner: “Well, that’s the sort of
stuff I do.”
“And what’s it all about? Put it so I can understand it.”
There was distinct hesitation. He said: “Now look. This is
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
19
confidential stuff. Even Pop’s other students don’t know any¬
thing about it. I don’t even think / know all about it. This isn’t
just a degree I’m after, you know. It’s Pop Tywood’s Nobel
Prize, and it’s going to be an Assistant Professorship for me at
Cal Tech. This has got to be published before it’s talked about.”
And I shook my head slowly and made my words very soft:
“No, son. You have it twisted. You’ll have to talk about it
before it’s published, because Tywood’s gone and maybe he’s
dead and maybe he isn’t. And if he’s dead, maybe he’s murdered.
And when the department has a suspicion of murder, everybody
talks. Now it will look bad for you, kid, if you try to keep some
secrets.”
It worked. I knew it would, because everyone reads murder
mysteries and knows all the cliches. He jumped out of his chair
and rattled the words off as if he had a script in front of him.
“Surely,” he said, “you can’t suspect me of ... of anything
like that. Why . . . why, my career—”
I shoved him back into his chair with the beginnings of a
sweat on his forehead. I went into the next line: “I don’t suspect
anybody of anything yet. And you won’t be in any trouble, if
you talk, chum.”
He was ready to talk. “Now this is all in strict confidence.”
Poor guy. He didn’t know the meaning of the word “strict.”
He was never out of eyeshot of an operator from that moment till
the government decided to bury the whole case with the one final
comment of “?.” Quote, Unquote. (I’m not kidding. To this
day, the case is neither opened nor closed. It’s just “?.”)
He said, dubiously; “You know what time travel is, I suppose?”
Sure I knew what time travel was. My oldest kid is twelve and
he listens to the afternoon video programs till he swells up
visibly with the junk he absorbs at the ears and eyes.
“What about time travel?” I said.
“In a sense, we can do it. Actually, it’s only what you might
call micro-temporal-translation—’ *
I almost lost my temper. In fact, I think I did. It seemed
obvious that the squirt was trying to diddle me; and without
subtlety. I’m used to having people think I look dumb; but not
that dumb.
I said through the back of my throat: “Are you going to tell
me that Tywood is out somewhere in time—like Ace Rogers, the
Lone Time Ranger?” (That was junior’s favorite program—Ace
Rogers was stopping Genghis Khan single-handed that week.)
But he looked as disgusted as I must have. “No,” he yelled.
“I don’t know where Pop is. If you’d listen to me—I said
20
Isaac Asimov
micro-temporal-translation. Now this isn’t a video show and it
isn’t magic; this happens to be science. For instance, you know
about matter-energy equivalence, I suppose.”
I nodded sourly. Everyone knows about that since Hiroshima
in the last war but one.
“All right, then,” he went on, “that’s good for a start. Now
if you take a known mass of matter and apply temporal transla¬
tion to it—you know, send it back in time—you are, in effect,
creating matter at the point in time to which you are sending it.
To do that, you must use an amount of energy equivalent to the
amount of matter you have created. In other words, to send a
gram—or, say, an ounce—of anything back in time, you have to
disintegrate an ounce of matter completely, to furnish the energy
required.”
“Hm-m-m,” I said, “that’s to create the ounce of matter in
the past. But aren’t you destroying an ounce of matter by remov¬
ing it from the present? Doesn’t that create the equivalent amount
of energy?”
And he looked just about as annoyed as a fellow sitting on a
bumblebee that wasn’t quite dead. Apparently laymen are never
supposed to question scientists.
He said: “I was trying to simplify it so you would understand
it. Actually, it’s more complicated. It would be very nice if we
could use the energy of disappearance to cause it to disappear but
that would be working in a circle, believe me. The requirements
of entropy would forbid it. To put it more rigorously, the energy
is required to overcome temporal inertia and it just works out so
that the energy in ergs required to send back a mass, in grams, is
equal to that mass times the square of the speed of light in
centimeters per second. Which just happens to be the Einstein
Mass-Energy Equivalence Equation. I can give you the math¬
ematics, you know.”
“I know,” I waxed some of that misplaced eagerness back.
“But was all this worked out experimentally. Or is it just on
paper?”
Obviously, the thing was to keep him talking.
He had that queer light in his eye that every research student
gets, I am told, when he is asked to discuss his problem. He’ll
discuss it with anyone, even with a “dumb flatfoot”—which
was convenient at the moment.
“You see,” he said like a man slipping you the inside dope on
a shady business deal, “what started the whole thing was this
neutrino business. They’ve been trying to find that neutrino since
the late thirties and they haven’t succeeded. It’s a subatomic
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
21
particle which has no charge and has a mass much less than even
an electron. Naturally, it’s next to impossible to spot, and hasn’t
been spotted yet. But they keep looking because without assum¬
ing that a neutrino exists, the energetics of some nuclear reac¬
tions can’t be balanced. So Pop Tywood got the idea about
twenty years ago that some energy was disappearing, in the form
of matter, back into time. We got working on that—or he
did—and I’m the first student he’s ever had tackle it along with
him.
“Obviously, we had to work with tiny amounts of material
and . . . well, it was just a stroke of genius on Pop’s part to
think of using traces of artificial radioactive isotopes. You could
work with just a few micrograms of it, you know, by following
its activity with counters. The variation of activity with time
should follow a very definite and simple law which has never
been altered by any laboratory condition known.
“Well, we’d send a speck back fifteen minutes, say, and
fifteen minutes before we did that—everything was arranged
automatically, you see—the count jumped to nearly double what
it should be, fell off normally, and then dropped sharply at the
moment it was sent back below where it would have been
normally. The material overlapped itself in time, you see, and
for fifteen minutes we counted the doubled material—’ ’
I interrupted: “You mean you had the same atoms existing in
two places at the same time.’’
“Yes,’’ he said, with mild surprise, “why not. That’s why we
use so much energy—the equivalent of creating those atoms.’’
And then he rushed on, “Now I’ll tell you what my particular
job is. If you send back the material fifteen minutes, it is
apparently sent back to the same spot relative to the Earth despite
the fact that in fifteen minutes, the Earth moved sixteen thouand
miles around the Sun, and the Sun itself moves more thousand
miles and so on. But there are certain tiny discrepancies which
I’ve analyzed and which turn out to be due, possibly to two
causes.
“First, there is a frictional effect—if you can use such a
term—so that matter does drift a little with respect to the Earth,
depending on how far back in time it is sent, and on the nature of
material. Then, too, some of the discrepancy can only be explained
by the assumption that passage through time itself takes time.’’
“How’s that?’’ I said.
“What I mean is that some of the radioactivity is evenly
spread throughout the time of translation as if the material tested
had been reacting during backward passage through time by a
22
Isaac Asimov
constant amount. My figures show that—well, if you were to be
moved backward in time, you would age one day for every
hundred years. Or, to put it another way, if you could watch a
time dial which recorded the time outside a ‘time-machine’, your
watch would move forward twenty-four hours while the time dial
moved back a hundred years. That’s a universal constant, I
think, because the speed of light is a universal constant. Anyway,
that’s my work.”
After a few minutes, in which I chewed all this, 1 asked:
“Where did you get the energy needed for your experiments?’’
“They ran out a special line from the power plant. Pop’s a big
shot there, and swung the deal.’*
“Hm-m-m. What was the heaviest amount of material you
sent into the past?’’
“Oh’’—he sent his eyes upwards—“I think we shot back one
hundredth of a milligram once. That’s ten micrograms.’*
“Ever try sending anything into the future?*’
“That won’t work,’’ he put in quickly. “Impossible. You can’t
change signs like that because the energy required becomes more
than infinite. It’s a one-way proposition.*’
I looked hard at my fingernails: “How much material could
you send back in time if you fissioned about ... oh, say, one
hundred pounds of plutonium.’’ Things I thought, were becoming,
if anything too obvious.
The answer came quickly: “In plutonium fission,*’ he said,
“not more than one or two percent of the mass is converted into
energy. Therefore, one hundred pounds of plutonium when com¬
pletely used up would send a pound or two back into time.**
“Is that all? But could you handle all that energy? I mean a
hundred pounds of plutonium can make quite an explosion.’’
“All relative,” he said, a bit pompously. “If you took all that
energy and let it loose a little at a time, you could handle it. If
you released it all at once, but used it just as fast as you released
it, you could still handle it. In sending back material through time,
energy can be used much faster than it can possibly be released
even through fission. Theoretically, anyway.’’
“But how do you get rid of it?*’
“It’s spread through time, naturally. Of course, the minimum
time through which material could be transferred would, therefore,
depend on the mass of the material. Otherwise, you’re liable to
have the energy density with time too high.’’
“All right, kid,’’ I said. “I’m calling up headquarters, and
they’ll send a man here to take you home. You’ll stay there
awhile.’*
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
23
“But— What for?”
“It won’t be for long.’’
It wasn’t—and it was made up to him afterwards.
I spent the evening at Headquarters. We had a library there—a
very special kind of library. The very morning after the explo¬
sion two or three operators had drifted quietly into the chemistry
and physics libraries of the University. Experts in their way.
They located every article Tywood had ever published in any
scientific journal and had snapped each page. Nothing was dis¬
turbed otherwise.
Other men went through magazine files and through book
lists. It ended with a room at Headquarters that represented a
complete Tywoodania. Nor was there a definite purpose in doing
this. It merely represented part of the thoroughness with which a
problem of this sort is met.
I went through that library. Not the scientific papers. I knew
there’d be nothing there that I wanted. But he had written a
series of articles for a magazine twenty years back, and I read
those. And I grabbed at every piece of private correspondence
they had available.
After that I just sat and thought—and got scared.
I got to bed about four in the morning and had nightmares.
But I was in the Boss’ private office at nine in the morning
just the same.
He’s a big man, the Boss, with iron-gray hair slicked down
tight. He doesn’t smoke, but he keeps a box of cigars on his desk
and when he doesn’t want to say anything for a few seconds, he
picks one up, rolls it about a little, smells it, then sticks it right
into the middle of his mouth and lights it in a very careful way.
By that time, he either has something to say or doesn’t have to
say anything at all. Then he puts the cigar down and lets it bum
to death.
He used up a box in about three weeks, and every Christmas,
half his gift-wraps held boxes of cigars.
He wasn’t reaching for any cigars now, though. He just folded
his big fists together on the desk and looked up at me from under
a creased forehead. “What’s boiling?’’
I told him. Slowly, because micro-temporal-translation doesn’t
sit well with anybody, especially when you call it time travel,
which I did. It’s a sign of how serious things were that he only
asked me once if I were crazy.
Then I was finished and we stared at each other.
He said, “And you think he tried to send something back in
24
Isaac Asimov
time—something weighing a pound or two and blew an entire
plant doing it?”
“It fits in,” I said.
I let him go for a while. He was thinking and I wanted him to
keep on thinking. I wanted him, if possible, to think of the same
thing I was thinking, so that I wouldn’t have to tell him—
Because I hated to have to tell him—
Because it was nuts, for one thing. And too horrible, for
another.
So I kept quiet and he kept on thinking and every once in a
while some of his thoughts came to the surface.
After a while, he said: “Assuming the student, Howe, to have
told the truth—and you’d better check his notebooks, by the
way, which I hope you’ve impounded—”
“The entire wing of that floor is out of bounds, sir. Edwards
has the notebooks.”
He went on: “All right. Assuming he told us all the truth he
knows, why did Tywood jump from less than a miligram to a
pound?”
His eyes came down and they were hard: “Now you’re concen¬
trating on the time-travel angle. To you, I gather, that is the
crucial point, with the energy involved as incidental—purely
incidental.”
“Yes, sir,” I said grimly. “I think exactly that.”
“Have you considered that you might be wrong? That you
might have matters inverted?”
“I don’t quite get that.”
“Well, look. You say you’ve read up on Tywood. All right.
He was one of that bunch of scientists after World War II that
fought the atom bomb; wanted a world state—You know about
that, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“He had a guilt complex,” the Boss said with energy. “He’d
helped work out the bomb, and he couldn’t sleep nights thinking
of what he’d done. He lived with that fear for years. And even
though the bomb wasn’t used in World War III, can you imagine
what every day of uncertainty must have meant to him? Can you
imagine the shriveling horror in his soul as he waited for others
to make the decision at every crucial moment till the final
Compromise of Sixty-Five?
“We have a complete psychiatric analysis of Tywood and
several others just like him, taken during the last war. Did you
know that?”
“No, sir.”
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
25
“It’s true. We let up after Sixty-Five, of course, because with
the establishment of world control of atomic power, the scrap¬
ping of the atomic bomb stockpile in all countries, and the
establishment of research liaison among the various spheres of
influence on the planet, most of the ethical conflict in the
scientific mind was removed.
“But the findings at the time were serious. In 1964, Tywood
had a morbid subconscious hatred for the very concept of atomic
power. He began to make mistakes, serious ones. Eventually, we
were forced to take him off research of any kind. And several
others as well, even though things were pretty bad at the time.
We had just lost India, if you remember.’’
Considering that I was in India at the time, I remembered. But
I still wasn’t seeing his point.
“Now what,’’ he continued, “if dregs of that attitude re¬
mained buried in Tywood to the very end. Don’t you see that
this time-travel is a double-edged sword? Why throw a pound of
anything into the past, anyway? For the sake of proving a point?
He had proved his case just as much when he sent back a
fraction of a milligram. That was good enough for the Nobel
Prize, I suppose.
“But there was one thing he could do with a pound of matter
that he couldn’t do with a milligram, and that was to drain a
power plant. So that was what he must have been after. He had
discovered a way of consuming inconceivable quantities of energy.
By sending back eighty pounds of dirt, he could remove all the
existing plutonium in the world. End atomic power for an indefi¬
nite period.’’
I was completely unimpressed, but I tried not to make that too
plain. I just said: “Do you think he could possibly have thought
he could get away with it more than once?’’
“This is all based on the fact that he wasn’t a normal man.
How do I know what he could imagine he could do? Besides,
there may be men behind him—with less science and more
brains—who are quite ready to continue onwards from this point. *’
“Have any of these men been found yet? Any evidence of
such men?*’
A little wait, and his hand reached for the cigar box. He stared
at the cigar and turned it end for end. Just a little wait more. I
was patient.
Then he put it down decisively without lighting it.
“No,’’ he said.
He looked at me, and clear though me, and said: “Then you
still don’t go for that?’’
26
Isaac Asimov
I shrugged, “Well—It doesn’t sound right.*’
“Do you have a notion of your own?’’
“Yes. But I can’t bring myself to talk about it. If I’m wrong.
I’m the wrongest man that ever was; but if I’m right, I’m the
lightest.’’
“I’ll listen,’’ he said, and he put his hand under the desk.
That was the pay-off. The room was armored, soundproof,
and radiation-proof to anything short of a nuclear explosion. And
with that little signal showing on his secretary’s desk, the Presi¬
dent of the United States couldn’t have interrupted us.
I leaned back and said: “Chief, do you happen to remember
how you met your wife? Was it a little thing?’’
He must have thought it a non sequitur. What else could he
have thought? But he was giving me my head now; having his
own reasons, I suppose.
He just smiled and said: “I sneezed and she turned around. It
was at a street comer.’’
“What made you be on that street comer just then? What
made her be? Do you remember just why you sneezed? Where
you caught the cold? Or where the speck of dust came from?
Imagine how many factors had to intersect in just the right place
at just the right time for you to meet your wife.’’
“I suppose we would have met some other time, if not then?’’
“But you can’t know that. How do you know whom you
didn't meet, because once when you might have turned around,
you didn’t; because once when you might have been late, you
weren’t. Your life forks at every instant, and you go down one
of the forks, almost at random and so does everyone else. Start
twenty years ago, and the forks diverge further and further with
time.
“You sneezed, and met a girl, and not another. As a
consequence, you made certain decisions, and so did the girl,
and so did the girl you didn’t meet, and the man who did meet
her, and the people you all met thereafter. And your family, her
family, their family—and your children.
“Because you sneezed twenty years ago, five people, or fifty,
or five hundred, might be dead now who would have been alive
or might be alive, who would have been dead. Move it two
hundred years ago: two thousand years ago, and a sneeze—even
by someone no history ever heard of—might have meant that no
one now alive would have been alive.’’
The Boss rubbed the back of his head: “Widening ripples. I
read a story once—’’
“So did I. It’s not a new idea—but I want you to think about
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
27
it for a while, because I want to read to you from an article by
Professor Elmer Tywood in a magazine twenty years ago. It was
just before the last war.”
I had copies of the film in my pocket and the white wall made
a beautiful screen which was what it was meant to do. The Boss
made a motion to turn about, but I waved him back.
“No, sir,” I said. “I want to read this to you. And I want you
to listen to it.’’
He leaned back.
“The article/' I went on, “is entitled: ‘Man’s First Great Failure!’
Remember, this was just before the war, when the bitter disap¬
pointment at the final failure of the United Nations was at its
height. What I will read are some excerpts from the first part of
the article. It goes like this:
“ \ . . That Man, with his technical perfection has failed to
solve the great sociological problems of today is only the second
immense tragedy that has come to the race. The first, and
perhaps the greater, was that once these same great sociological
problems were solved; and yet these solutions were not perma¬
nent because the technical perfection we have today did not then
exist.
“ ‘It was a case of having bread without butter, or butter
without bread. Never both together . . .
“ ‘Consider the Hellenic world from which our philosophy,
our mathematics, our ethics, our art, our literature—our entire
culture, in fact—stem ... In the days of Pericles, Greece, like
our own world, in microcosm, was a surprisingly modem pot¬
pourri of conflicting ideologies and ways of life. But then Rome
came, adopting the culture, but bestowing, and enforcing, peace.
To be sure, the Pax Romana lasted only two hundred years, but
no like period has existed since . . .
“ ‘War was abolished. Nationalism did not exist. The Roman
citizen was Empire-wide. Saul of Tarsus and Flavius Josephus
were Roman citizens. Spaniards, North Africans, Illyrians as¬
sumed the purple. Slavery existed, but it was an indiscriminate
slavery, imposed as a punishment, incurred as the price of
economic failure, brought on by the fortunes of war. No man
was a natural slave, because of the color of his skin, or the place
of his birth.
“ ‘Religious toleration was complete. If an exception was made
early in the case of the Christians, it was because they refused to
accept the principle of toleration; because they insisted that only
they themselves knew truth—a principle abhorrent to the civi¬
lized Roman . . .
28
Isaac Asimov
“ ‘With all of Western culture under a single polis , with the
cancer of religious and national particularism and exclusivism
absent; with a high civilization in existence—why could not Man
hold his gains?
“ ‘It was because technologically, ancient Hellenism remained
backward. It was because without a machine civilization, the
price of leisure—and hence civilization and culture—for the few,
was slavery for the many. Because the civilization could not find
the means to bring comfort and ease to all the population.
“ ‘Therefore, the depressed classes turned to the other world,
and to religions which spumed the material benefits of this
world—so that science was made impossible in any true sense
for over a millennium. And further, as the initial impetus of
Hellenism waned, the Empire lacked the technological powers to
beat back the barbarians. In fact, it was not till after 1500 A.D.
that war became sufficiently a function of the industrial resources
of a nation to enable the settled people to defeat invading tribesmen
and nomads with ease . . .
“ ‘Imagine then, if somehow the ancient Greeks had learned
just a hint of modem chemistry and physics. Imagine if the
growth of the Empire had been accompanied by the growth of
science, technology and industry. Imagine an Empire, in which
machinery replaced slaves; in which all men had a decent share
of the world’s goods; in which the legion became the armored
column, against which no barbarians could stand. Imagine an
Empire which would therefore spread all over the world, without
religious or national prejudices.
“ ‘An Empire of all men—all brothers—eventually all free . . .
“ ‘If history could be changed. If that first great failure could
have been prevented—’ ”
And I stopped at that point.
“Well?” said the Boss.
“Well,” I said, “I think it isn’t difficult to connect all that
with the fact that Tywood blew an entire power plant in his
anxiety to send something back to the past, while in his office
safe we found sections of a chemistry textbook translated into
Greek.”
His face changed, while he considered.
Then, he said heavily: “But nothing’s happened.”
“I know. But then I’ve been told by Tywood’s student that it
takes a day to move back a century in time. Assuming that
ancient Greece was the target area, we have twenty centuries,
hence twenty days.”
“But can it be stopped?”
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
“/ wouldn’t know. Tywood might, but he’s dead.”
The enormity of it all hit me at once, deeper than it had the
night before—
All humanity was virtually under sentence of death. And while
that was merely horrible abstraction, the fact that reduced it to a
thoroughly unbearably reality, was that I was, too. And my wife,
and my kid.
Further, it was a death without precedence. A ceasing to exist,
and no more. The passing of a breath. The vanishing of a dream.
The drift into eternal non-space and non-time of a shadow. I
would not be dead at all, in fact. I would merely never have been
bom.
Or would I? Would I exist—my individuality—my ego—my
soul, if you like? Another life? Other circumstances?
I thought none of that in words, then. But if a cold knot in the
stomach could ever speak under the circumstances it would
sound like that, I think.
The Boss moved in on my thoughts—hard.
“Then we have about two and a half weeks. No time to lose.
Come on.”
I grinned with one side of my mouth: “What do we do? Chase
the book?”
“No,” he replied coldly, “but there are two courses of action
we must follow. First, you may be wrong—altogether. All of
this circumstantial reasoning may still represent a false lead,
perhaps deliberately thrown before us, to cover up the real truth.
That must be checked.
“Secondly, you may be right—but there may be some way of
stopping the book: other than chasing it in a time machine, I
mean. If so, we must find out how.’’
“I would just like to say, sir, if this is a false lead, only a
madman would consider it a believable one. So suppose I’m
right, and suppose there’s no way of stopping it?”
“Then, young fellow. I’m going to keep pretty busy for two
and a half weeks, and I’d advise you to do the same. The time
will pass more quickly that way.”
Of course he was right.
“Where do we start?” I asked.
“The first thing we need is a list of all men and women on the
government payroll under Tywood.”
“Why?”
“Reasoning. Your specialty, you know. Tywood doesn’t know
Greek, I think we can assume with fair safety, so someone else
must have done the translating. It isn’t likely that anyone would
30
Isaac Asimov
do a job like that for nothing, and it isn’t likely that Tywood
would pay out of his personal funds—not on a professor’s salary. ’’
“He might,” I pointed out, “have been interested in more
secrecy than a government payroll affords.”
“Why? Where was the danger? Is it a crime to translate a
chemistry textbook into Greek? Who would ever deduce from
that a plot such as you’ve described.”
It took us half an hour to turn up the name of Mycroft James
Boulder, listed as “Consultant” and to find out that he was
mentioned in the University Catalogue as Assistant Professor of
Philosophy and to check by telephone that among his many
accomplishments was a thorough knowledge of Attic Greek.
Which was a coincidence—because with the Boss reaching for
his hat, the interoffice teletype clicked away and it turned out
that Mycroft James Boulder was in the anteroom, at the end of a
two-hour continuing insistence that he see the Boss.
The Boss put his hat back and opened his office door.
Professor Mycroft James Boulder was a gray man. His hair
was gray and his eyes were gray. His suit was gray, too.
But most of all, his expression was gray; gray with a tension
that seemed to twist at the lines in his thin face.
Boulder said, softly: “I’ve been trying for three days to get a
hearing, sir, with a responsible man. I can get no higher than
yourself.”
“I may be high enough,” said the Boss. “What’s on your
mind?”
“It is quite important that I be granted an interview with
Professor Tywood.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I am quite certain that he is in government custody.”
“Why?”
“Because I know that he was planning an experiment which
would entail the breaking of security regulations. Events since,
as nearly as I can make them out, flow naturally from the
supposition that security regulations have indeed been broken. I
can presume then that the experiment has at least been attempted.
I must discover whether it has been successfully concluded.”
“Professor Boulder,” said the Boss, “I believe you can read
Greek.”
“Yes, I can,”—coolly.
“And have translated chemical texts for Professor Tywood on
government money. ’’
“Yes—as a legally employed consultant.”
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
31
“Yet such translation, under the circumstances, constitutes a
crime, since it makes you an accessory to Tywood’s crime.”
“You can establish a connection?”
“Can’t you? Or haven’t you heard of Tywood’s notions on
time travel, or . . . what do you call it . . . micro-temporal-
translation?”
“Ah?” and Boulder smiled a little. “He’s told you, then.”
“No he hasn’t,” said the Boss, harshly. “Professor Tywood
is dead.”
“What?” Then—“I don’t believe you.”
“He died of apoplexy. Look at this.”
He had one of the photographs taken that first night in his wall
safe. Tywood’s face was distorted but recognizable—sprawled
and dead.
Boulder’s breath went in and out as if the gears were clogged.
He stared at the picture for three full minutes by the electric
clock on the wall. “Where is this place?” he asked.
“The Atomic Power Plant.”
“Had he finished his experiment?”
The Boss shrugged: “There’s no way of telling. He was dead
when we found him.”
Boulder’s lips were pinched and colorless. “That must be
determined somehow. A commission of scientists must be
established, and, if necessary, the experiment must be repeated—”
But the Boss just looked at him, and reached for a cigar. I’ve
never seen him take longer—and when he put it down, curled in
its unused smoke, he said: “Tywood wrote an article for a
magazine, twenty years ago—”
“Oh,” and the professor’s lips twisted, “is that what gave
you your clue. You may ignore that. The man is only a physical
scientist and knows nothing of either history or sociology. A
schoolboy’s dreams and nothing more.”
“Then you don’t think sending your translation back will
inaugurate a Golden Age, do you?”
“Of course not. Do you think you can graft the developments
of two thousand years of slow labor on to a child society not
ready for it? Do you think a great invention or a great scientific
principle is bom full-grown in the mind of a genius divorced from
his cultural milieu? Newton’s enunciation of the Law of Gravity
was delayed for twenty years because the then-current figure for
the Earth’s diameter was wrong by ten percent. Archimedes
almost discovered calculus, but failed because Arabic numerals,
invented by some nameless Hindu or group of Hindus, were
unknown to him.
32
Isaac Asimov
“For that matter, the mere existence of a slave society in
ancient Greece and Rome meant that machines could scarcely
attract much attention—slaves being so much cheaper and more
adaptable. And men of true intellect could scarcely be expected
to spend their energies on devices intended for manual labor.
Even Archimedes, the greatest engineer of antiquity, refused to
publish any of his practical inventions—only mathematic abstrac¬
tions. And when a young man asked Plato of what use geometry
was, he was forthwith expelled from the Academy as a man with
a mean, unphilosophic soul.
“Science does not plunge forward—it inches along in the
directions permitted by the greater forces that mold society and
which are in turn molded by society. And no great man advances
but on the shoulders of the society that surrounds him—’’
The Boss interrupted him at that point “Suppose you tell us
what your part in Tywood’s work was, then. We’ll take your
word for it that history cannot be changed.”
“Oh it can, but not purposefully—You see, when Tywood
first requested my services in the matter of translating certain
textbook passages into Greek, I agreed for the money involved.
But he wanted the translation on parchment; he insisted on the
use of ancient Greek terminology—the language of Plato, to use
his words—regardless of how I had to twist the literal signifi¬
cance of passages, and he wanted it hand-written in rolls.
“I was curious. I, too, found his magazine article. It was
difficult for me to jump to the obvious conclusion since the
achievements of modem science transcend the imaginings of
philosophy in so many ways. But I learned the truth eventually,
and it was at once obvious that Tywood’s theory of changing
history was infantile. There are twenty million variables for
every instant of time, and no system of mathematics—no mathe¬
matic psychohistory, to coin a phrase—has yet been developed
to handle that ocean of varying functions.
“In short, any variation of events two thousand years ago
would change all subsequent history but in no predictable way.”
The Boss suggested, with a false quietness: “Like the pebble
that starts the avalanche, right?”
“Exactly. You have some understanding of the situation, I
see. I thought deeply for weeks before I proceeded, and then I
realized how I must act —must act. ’ ’
There was a low roar. The Boss stood up and his chair went
over backward. He swung around his desk, and he had a hand on
Boulder’s throat. I was stepping out to stop him, but he waved
me back—
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE
33
He was only tightening the necktie a little. Boulder could still
breathe. He had gone very white, and for all the time that the
Boss talked, he restricted himself to just that—breathing.
And the Boss said: “Sure, I can see how you. decided you
must act. I know that some of you brain-sick philosophers think
the world needs fixing. You want to throw the dice again and see
what turns up. Maybe you don’t even care if you’re alive in the
new setup—or that no one can possibly know what you’ve done.
But you’re going to create just the same. You’re going to give
God another chance so to speak.
“Maybe I just want to live—but the world could be worse. In
twenty million different ways, it could be worse. A fellow
named Wilder once wrote a play called The Skin of Our Teeth.
Maybe you’ve read it. Its thesis was that Mankind survived by
just that skin of their teeth. No, I’m not going to give you a
speech about the Ice Age nearly wiping us out. I don’t know
enough. I’m not even going to talk about the Greeks winning at
Marathon; the Arabs being defeated at Tours; the Mongols turn¬
ing back at the last minute without even being defeated—because
I’m no historian.
“But take the Twentieth Century. The Germans were stopped
at the Marne twice in World War I. Dunkirk happened in World
War II, and somehow the Germans were stopped at Moscow and
Stalingrad. We could have used the atom bomb in the last war
and we didn’t, and just when it looked as if both sides would
have to, the Great Compromise happened—just because General
Bruce was delayed in taking off from the Ceylon airfield long
enough to receive the message directly. One after the other, just
like that, all through history—lucky breaks. For every 4 if’ that
didn’t come true, that would have made wonder-men of all of us,
if it had, there were twenty *ifs’ that didn’t come true, that would
have brought disaster to ail of us, if they had.
“You’re gambling on that one-in-twenty chance—gambling
every life on Earth. And you’ve succeeded, too, because Tywood
did send that text back.”
He ground out that last sentence, and opened his fist, so that
Boulder could fall out and back into his chair.
And Boulder laughed.
“You fool,’’ he gasped, bitterly, “How close you can be and
yet how widely you can miss the mark. Tywood did send his
book back, then? You are sure of that?’’
“No chemical textbook in Greek was found on the scene,’’
said the Boss, grimly, “and millions of calories of energy had
disappeared. Which doesn’t change the fact, however, that we
34
Isaac Asimov
have two and a half weeks in which to—make things interesting
for you/’
“Oh, nonsense. No foolish dramatics, please. Just listen to
me, and try to understand. There were Greek philosophers once,
named Leucippus and Democritus who evolved an atomic theory.
All matter, they said was composed of atoms. Varieties of atoms
were distinct and changeless and by their different combinations
with each other formed the various substances found in nature.
That theory was not the result of experiment or observation. It
came into being, somehow, full-grown.
“The didactic Roman poet, Lucretius, in his ‘ De Rerum
Natural —‘On the Nature of Things’—elaborated on that theory
and throughout manages to sound startlingly modem.
“In Hellenistic times, Hero built a steam engine and weapons
of war became almost mechanized. The period has been referred
to as an abortive mechanical age, which came to nothing because
somehow, it neither grew out of nor fitted into its social and
economic milieu. Alexandrian science was a queer and rather
inexplicable phenomenon.
“Then one might mention the old Roman legend about the
books of the Sibyl that contained mysterious information direct
from the gods—
“In other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any
change in the course of past events, however trifling, would have
incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are
right in supposing that any random change is much more likely
to be for the worst than for the better, I must point out that you
are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions.
“Because this is the world in which the Greek chemistry text
was sent back.
“This has been a Red Queen’s race, if you remember your
Through the Looking Glass. In the Red Queen’s country, one
had to run as fast as one could merely to stay in the same place.
And so it was in this case! Tywood may have thought he was
creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations,
and I took care that only such passages as would account for the
queer scraps of knowledge the ancients apparently got from
nowhere would be included.
“And my only intention, for all my racing, was to stay in the
same place.’’
Three weeks passed; three months; three years. Nothing
happened. When nothing happens, you have no proof. We gave
up trying to explain, and we ended, the Boss and I, by doubting
it ourselves.
THE RED QUEEN S RACE
35
The case never ended. Boulder could not be considered a
criminal without being considered a world savior as well, and
vice versa. He was ignored. And in the end, the case was neither
solved, nor closed out; merely put in a file all by itself, under the
designation “?” and buried in the deepest vault in Washington.
The Boss is in Washington now; a big wheel. And I’m Re¬
gional Head of the Bureau.
Boulder is still assistant professor, though. Promotions are
slow at the University.
FLAW _
John D. MacDonald (1916— )
Startling Stories, January
John D. MacDonald returns (see his two excellent stories in
our 1948 volume) with this interesting and unusual piece of
speculative fiction. MacDonald was tremendously prolific in
the late 1940s, working in almost every genre that still had
magazine markets available, in what was the twilight of the
pulp era. He got published because he was a wonderful
storyteller, but also because he developed an excellent work¬
ing knowledge of genres and their conventions. However, like
all great writers, he could successfully defy genre conventions
and get away with it, as in this story, which is blatantly
pessimistic and questions the very possibility of going to the
stars—an attitude and point of view that most late 1940s
science fiction writers and their readers certainly did not
share. — M.H.G.
(Science fiction can be at its most amusing [and most
useful, perhaps] when it challenges our assumptions. And that
is true of straightforward scientific speculation, also.
Even when the challenge is doomed to failure [and in my
opinion the one in this story is so doomed] or when scientific
advance actually demonstrates, within a few years, the chal¬
lenge to be doomed, the story is likely to remain interesting.
— Thus, I once wrote a story in which / speculated that the
Moon was only a false front and that on the other side were
merely wooden supports. Within a few years the other side of
the Moon was photographed and our satellite proved not to
be a false front after all. But who cares? Anyone who reads
the story is not likely to forget the speculation.
36
FLAW
37
Read “Flaw,” then, and ask yourself: With the rockets and
probes of the last three decades, has the thesis of this story
yet been demonstrated to be false? If so, how? — I.A.)
I rather imagine that I am quite mad. Nothing spectacular, you
understand. Nothing calling for restraint, or shock therapy. I can
live on, dangerous to no one but myself.
This beach house at La Jolla is comfortable. At night I sit on
the rocks and watch the distant stars and think of Johnny. He
probably wouldn’t like the way I look now. My fingernails are
cracked and broken and there are streaks of gray in my blonde
hair. I no longer use makeup. Last night I looked at myself in the
mirror and my eyes were dead.
It was then that I decided that it might help me to write all this
down. I have no idea what I’ll do with it.
You see, I shared Johnny’s dreams.
And now I know that those dreams are no longer possible. I
wonder if he learned how impossible they were in the few
seconds before his flaming death.
There have always been people like Johnny and me. For a
thousand years mankind has looked at the stars and thought of
reaching them. The stars were to be the new frontier, the new
worlds on which mankind could expand and find the full promise
of the human soul.
I never thought much about it until I met Johnny. Five years
ago. My name is Carol Adlar. At that time I was a government
clerk working in the offices at the rocket station in Arizona. It
was 1959. The year before the atomic drive was perfected.
Johnny Pritchard. I figured him out, I thought. A good-
looking boy with dark hair and a careless grin and a swagger.
That’s all I saw in the beginning. The hot sun blazed down on
the rocks and the evenings were cool and clear.
There were a lot of boys like Johnny at the rocket station—
transferred from Air Corps work. Volunteers. You couldn’t order
a man off the surface of the earth in a rocket.
The heart is ever cautious. Johnny Pritchard began to hang
around my desk, a warm look in his eyes. I was as cool as I
could be. You don’t give your heart to a man who soars up at the
tip of a comet plume. But I did.
I told myself that I would go out with him one evening and I
would be so cool to him that it would cure him and he would
stop bothering me. I expected him to drive me to the city in his
38
John D. MacDonald
little car. Instead we drove only five miles from the compound,
parked on the brow of a hill looking across the moon-silvered
rock and sand.
At first I was defensive, until I found that all he wanted to do
was talk. He talked about the stars. He talked in a low voice that
was somehow tense with his visions. I found out that first
evening that he wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t merely one of
those young men with perfect coordination and high courage.
Johnny had in him the blood of pioneers. And his frontier was
the stars.
“You see, Carol,*’ he said, “I didn’t know a dam thing about
the upstairs at the time of my transfer. I guess I don’t know
much right now. Less, probably than the youngest astronomer or
physicist on the base. But I’m learning. I spend every minute I
can spare studying about it. Carol, I’m going upstairs some day.
Right out into space. And I want to know about it. I want to
know all about it.
“We’ve made a pretty general mess of this planet. I sort of
figure ihat the powers-that-be planned it that way. They said,
‘We’ll give this puny little fella called man a chance to mess up
one planet and mess it up good. But we’ll let him slowly learn
how to travel to another. Then, by the time he can migrate, he
will be smart enough to turn the next planet into the sort of a
deal we wanted him to have in the beginning. A happy world
with no wars, no disease, no starvation.’ *’
I should have said something flip at that point, but the words
weren’t in me. Like a fool, I asked him questions about the
galaxies, about the distant stars. We drove slowly back. The next
day he loaned me two of his books. Within a week I had caught
his fervor, his sense of dedication.
After that it was, of course, too late.
All persons in love have dreams. This was ours. Johnny would
be at the controls of one of the first interplanetary rockets. He
would return to me and then we would become one of the first
couples to become colonists for the new world.
Silly, wasn’t it?
He told me of the problems that would be solved with that first
interplanetary flight. They would take instruments far enough out
into space so that triangulation could solve that tiresome bicker¬
ing among the physicists and astronomers about the theory of the
exploding universe as against the theory of “tired light’’ from
the distant galaxies.
And now I am the only person in the world who can solve that
FLAW
39
problem. Oh, the others will Find the answer soon enough. And
then they, too, can go quietly mad.
They will find out that for years they have been in the position
of the man at the table with his fingers almost touching the sugar
bowl and who asks why there isn’t any sugar on the table.
That year was the most perfect year of my life.
“When are you going to marry me, Johnny?” I asked him.
“This is so sudden,” he said, laughing. Then he sobered.
“Just as soon as I come back from the first one, honey. It isn’t
fair any other way. Don’t you see?”
I saw with my mind, but not with my heart. We exchanged
rings. All very sentimental. He gave me a diamond and I gave
him my father’s ring, the one that was sent home to my mother
and me when Dad was killed in Burma in World War II. It fit
him and he liked it. It was a star ruby in a heavy silver setting.
The star was perfect, but by looking closely into the stone you
could see the flaws. Two dark little dots and a tiny curved line
which together gave the look of a small and smiling face.
With his arm around me, with the cool night air of Arizona
touching our faces, we looked up at the sky and talked of the
home we*would make millions of miles away.
Childish, wasn’t it?
Last night after looking in the mirror, I walked down to the
rocks. The Government money was given to me when Johnny
didn’t come back. It is enough. It will last until I die and I hope
it will not be too long before I die.
The sea, washing the rocks, asked me the soft, constant
question. “Why? Why? Why?” I looked at the sky. The answer
was not there.
Fourteen months after I met Johnny, a crew of two in the
Destiny / made the famous circuit of the moon and landed safely.
Johnny was not one of them. He had hoped to be.
“A test run,” he called it. The first step up the long flight of
stairs.
You certainly remember the headlines given that flight of
Destiny /. Even the New York Times broke out a new and larger
type face for the headlines. Korby and Sweeny became the
heroes of the entire world.
The world was confident then. The intervening years have
shaken that confidence. But the world does not know yet. I think
some suspect, but they do not know. Only I know for a certainty.
And I, of course, am quite mad. I know that now.
Call it a broken heart—or broken dreams.
40
John D. MacDonald
Johnny was selected for Destiny II. After he told me and after
the tears came, partly from fear, partly from the threat of loneliness,
he held me tightly and kissed my eyes. I had not known that the
flight of Destiny //, if successful, would take fourteen months.
The fourteen months were to include a circuit of Mars and a
return to the takeoff point. Fourteen months before I would see
him again. Fourteen months before I would feel his arms around
me.
A crew of four. The famous Korby and Sweeny, plus Anthony
Marinetta and my Johnny. Each morning when I went to work I
could see the vast silver ship on the horizon, the early sun
glinting on the blunt nose. Johnny’s ship.
Those last five months before takeoff were like the five months
of life ahead of a prisoner facing execution. And Johnny’s
training was so intensified after his selection that I couldn’t see
him as often as before.
We were young and we were in love and we made our
inevitable mistake. At least we called it a mistake. Now I know
that it wasn’t, because Johnny didn’t come back.
With the usual sense of guilt we planned to be married, and
then reverted to our original plan. I would wait for him. Nothing
could go wrong.
Takeoff was in the cold dawn of a February morning. I stood
in the crowd beside a girl who worked in the same office. I held
her arm. She carried the bruises for over a week.
The silver hull seemed to merge with the gray of the dawn.
The crowd was silent. At last there was the blinding, blue-white
flare of the jets, the stately lift into the air, the moment when
Destiny II seemed to hang motionless fifty feet in the air, and
then the accelerating blast that arrowed it up and up into the
dark-gray sky where a few stars still shone. I walked on leaden
legs back to the administration building and sat slumped at my
desk, my mouth dry, my eyes hot and burning.
The last faint radio signal came in three hours later.
“All well. See you next year.’’
From then on there would be fourteen months of silence.
I suppose that in a way I became accustomed to it.
I was numb, apathetic, stupefied. They would probably have
got rid of me had they not known how it was between Johnny
and me. I wouldn’t have blamed them. Each morning I saw the
silver form of Destiny III taking shape near where Destiny II had
taken off. The brash young men made the same jokes, gave the
office girls the same line of chatter.
But they didn’t bother me. Word had got around.
FLAW
41
1 found a friend. The young wife of Tony Marienetta. We
spent hours telling each other in subtle ways that everything
would come out all right.
I remember one night when Marge grinned and said:
“Well anyway, Carol, nobody has ever had their men go quite
so far away.”
There is something helpless about thinking of the distance
between two people in the form of millions of miles.
After I listened to the sea last night, I walked slowly back up
the steep path to this beach house. When I clicked the lights on
Johnny looked at me out of the silver frame on my writing desk.
His eyes are on me as I write this. They are happy and confident
eyes. I am almost glad that he didn’t live to find out.
The fourteen months were like one single revolution of a
gigantic Ferris wheel. You start at the top of the wheel, and
through seven months the wheel carries you slowly down into
the darkness and the fear. Then, after you are at your lowest
point, the wheel slowly starts to carry you back up into the light.
Somewhere in space I knew that Johnny looked at the small
screen built into the control panel and saw the small bright
sphere of earth and thought of me. I knew all during that
fourteen months that he wasn’t dead. If he had died, no matter
how many million miles away from me, I would have known it
in the instant of his dying.
The world forgets quickly. The world had pushed Destiny II
off the surface of consciousness a few months after takeoff. Two
months before the estimated date of return, it began to creep
back into the papers and onto the telescreens of the world.
Work had stopped on Destiny III. The report of the four
crewmen might give a clue to alterations in the interior.
It was odd the way I felt. As though I had been frozen under
the transparent ice of a small lake. Spring was coming and the
ice grew thinner.
Each night 1 went to sleep thinking of Johnny driving down
through the sky toward me at almost incalculable speed. Closer,
closer, ever closer.
It was five weeks before the date when they were due to
return. I was asleep in the barracks-like building assigned to the
unmarried women of the base.
The great thud and jar woke me up and through the window I
saw the night sky darkening in the afterglow of some brilliant
light.
42
John D. MacDonald
We gathered by the windows and talked for a long time about
what it could have been. It was in all of our minds that it could
have been the return of Destiny II , but we didn’t put it into
words, because no safe landing could have resulted in that
deathly thud.
With the lights out again, I tried to sleep. I reached out into
the night sky with my heart, trying to contact Johnny.
And the sky was empty.
I sat up suddenly, my lips numb, my eyes staring. No. It was
imagination. It was illusion. Johnny was still alive. Of course.
But when I composed myself for sleep it ^was as though dirges
were softly playing. In all the universe there was no living entity
called Johnny Pritchard. Nowhere.
The telescreens were busy the next morning and I saw the
shape of fear. An alert operator had caught the fast shape as it
had slammed flaming down through the atmosphere to land forty
miles from the base in deserted country making a crater a
half-mile across.
“It is believed that the object was a meteor,” the voice of the
announcer said. “Radar screens picked up the image and it is
now known that it was far too large to be the Destiny II arriving
ahead of a schedule.”
It was then that I took a deep breath. But the relief was not
real. I was only kidding myself. It was as though I was in
the midst of a dream of terror and could not think of magic words
to cause the spell to cease.
After breakfast I was ill.
The meteor had hit with such impact that the heat generated
had fused the sand. Scientific instruments proved that the mass
of the meteor itself, nine hundred feet under the surface was
largely metallic. The telescreens began to prattle about invaders
from an alien planet. And the big telescopes scanned the heavens
for the first signs of the returning Destiny II.
The thought began as a small spot, glowing in some deep part
of my mind. I knew that I had to cross the forty miles between
the base and the crater. But I did not know why I had to cross it.
I did not know why I had to stand at the lip of the crater and
watch the recovery operations. I felt like a subject under post¬
hypnotic influence—compelled to do something without know¬
ing the reason. But compelled, nevertheless.
One of the physicists took me to the crater in one of the base
helicopters after I had made the request of him in such a way that
he could not refuse.
Eleven days after the meteor had fallen, I stood on the lip of
FLAW
43
the crater and looked down into the heart of it to where the vast
shaft had been sunk to the meteor itself. Dr. Rawlins handed me
his binoculars and I watched the mouth of the shaft.
Men working down in the shaft had cut away large pieces of
the body of the meteor and some of them had been hauled out
and trucked away. They were blackened and misshapen masses
of fused metal.
I watched the mouth of the shaft until my eyes ached and until
the young physicist shifted restlessly and kept glancing at his
watch and at the sun sinking toward the west. When he asked to
borrow the binoculars, I gave them up reluctantly. 1 could hear
the distant throb of the hoist motors. Something was coming up
the shaft.
Dr. Rawlins made a sudden exclamation. 1 looked at the
mouth of the shaft. The sun shone with red fire on something
large. It dwarfed the men who stood near it.
Rudely I snatched the binoculars from Dr. Rawlins and looked,
knowing even as I lifted them to my eyes what I would see.
Because at that moment I knew the answer to something that
the astronomers and physicists had been bickering about for
many years. There is no expanding universe. There is no tired
light.
As I sit here at my writing desk, I can imagine how it was
during those last few seconds. The earth looming up in the
screen on the instrument panel, but not nearly large enough. Not
large enough at all. Incredulity, then because of the error in size,
the sudden application of the nose jets. Too late. Fire and
oblivion and a thud that shook the earth for hundreds of miles.
No one else knows what I know. Maybe soon they will guess.
And then there will be an end to the proud dreams of migration
to other worlds. We are trapped here. There will be no other
worlds for us. We have made a mess of this planet, and it is
something that we cannot leave behind us. We must stay here
and clean it up as best we can.
Maybe a few of them already know. Maybe they have guessed.
Maybe they guessed, as I did, on the basis of the single object
that was brought up out of that shaft on that bright, cold afternoon.
Yes, I saw the sun shining on the six-pointed star. With the
binoculars I looked into the heart of it and saw the two dots and a
curved line that made the flaws look like a smiling face. A ruby
the size of a bungalow.
There is no expanding universe. There is no “tired light.”
44
John D. MacDonald
There is only a Solar system that, due to an unknown influence,
is constantly shrinking.
For a little time the Destiny II avoided that influence. That is
why they arrived too soon, why they couldn’t avoid the crash,
and why I am quite mad.
The ruby was the size of a bungalow, but it was, of course,
quite unchanged. It was I and my world that had shrunk.
If Johnny had landed safely, I would be able to walk about on
the palm of his hand.
It is a good thing that he died.
And it will not be long before I die also.
The sea whispers softly against the rocks a hundred yards from
the steps of my beach house.
And Destiny HI has not yet returned.
It is due in three months.
PRIVATE EYE _
by “Lewis Padgett” (Henry Kuttner,
1914—1958 and C.L. Moore,
1911— ; this story is generally
believed to have been written by
Kuttner]
Astounding Science Fiction, January
The Kuttners were so prolific that they made extensive use of
pen names—in addition to Kuttner and Moore, singly and
listed together, they wrote as “Lewis Padgett" and as
“Lawrence O’Donnell," producing important stories under
both of these pseudonyms. The present selection is the first of
three in this book—the late 1940s were tremendously produc¬
tive for this wonderful writing team.
As Isaac points out, “Private Eye" is a classic blend of
mystery and science fiction and fully deserves the title of
“classic." It is not now unusual for such combinations to see
print; indeed , in the last twenty years dozens of stories in¬
corporating a murder mystery with sf have appeared, and
many have been collected in such anthologies as Miriam
Allen deFord’s Space, Time & Crime (1964), Barry N.
Malzberg and Bill Pronzini’s wonderful Dark Sins, Dark
Crimes (1978), and our own (along with Charles G. Waugh)
The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction (1979).—M.H.G.
(John Campbell, the greatest of all science fiction editors,
was one of the most prescient people / have ever met—and yet
he was given to peculiar blind spots. For instance , during the
1940’s he frequently maintained that science fiction mysteries
were impossible, because it was so easy to use futuristic
gimmicks to help the detective crack his case.
1 eventually showed, in 1953, that a classic mystery could
be combined with science fiction if one simply set up the
boundary conditions at the start and stuck to them. / reso¬
lutely allowed no futuristic gimmicks to appear suddenly and
give the detective an unfair advantage.
45
46
Henry Kuttner
In "Private Eye ” however, Henry Kuttner [preceding me
by four years] took the harder task of allowing a futuristic
gimmick—one that would seem to make it impossible to get
away with murder—and then labored to produce an honest
murder mystery anyway. The result was an undoubted
classic—LA.)
The forensic sociologist looked closely at the image on the wall
screen. Two figures were frozen there, one in the act of stabbing
the other through the heart with an antique letter cutter, once
used at Johns Hopkins for surgery. That was before the ultra-
microtome, of course.
“As tricky a case as I’ve ever seen,” the sociologist remarked.
“If we can make a homicide charge stick on Sam Clay, I’ll be a
little surprised.”
The tracer engineer twirled a dial and watched the figures on
the screen repeat their actions. One—Sam Clay—snatched the
letter cutter from a desk and plunged it into the other man’s
heart. The victim fell down dead. Clay started back in apparent
horror. Then he dropped to his knees beside the twitching body
and said wildly that he didn’t mean it. The body drummed its
heels upon the rug and was still.
“That last touch was nice,” the engineer said.
“Well, I’ve got to make the preliminary survey,” the sociolo¬
gist sighed, settling in his dictachair and placing his fingers on
the keyboard. “I doubt if I’ll find any evidence. However, the
analysis can come later. Where’s Clay now?”
“His mouthpiece put in a habeas mens .”
“I didn’t think we’d be able to hold him. But it was worth
trying. Imagine, just one shot of scop and he’d have told the
truth. Ah, well. We’ll do it the hard way, as usual. Start the
tracer, will you? It won’t make sense till we run it chronologically,
but one must start somewhere. Good old Blackstone,” the sociolo¬
gist said, as, on the screen, Clay stood up, watching the corpse
revive and arise, and then pulled the miraculously clean paper
cutter out of its heart, all in reverse.
“Good old Blackstone,” he repeated. “On the other hand,
sometimes I wish I’d lived in Jeffreys’ time. In those days,
homicide was homicide.”
Telepathy never came to much. Perhaps the developing faculty
went underground in response to a familiar natural law after the
new science appeared—omniscience. It wasn’t really that, of
PRIVATE BYE
47
course. It was a device for looking into the past. And it was
limited to a fifty-year span; no chance of seeing the arrows at
Agincourt or the homunculi of Bacon. It was sensitive enough to
pick up the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted
on matter, descramble and screen them, and reproduce the image
of what had happened. After all, a man’s shadow can be photo¬
graphed on concrete, if he’s unlucky enough to be caught in an
atomic blast. Which is something. The shadow’s about all here is
left.
However, opening the past like a book didn’t solve all problems.
It took generations for the maze of complixties to iron itself out,
though finally a tentative check-and-balance was reached. The
right to kill has been sturdily defended by mankind since Cain
rose up against Abel. A good many idealists quoted, “The voice
of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground,” but that
didn’t stop the lobbyists and the pressure groups. Magna Carta
was quoted in reply. The right to privacy was defended desperately.
And the curious Upshot of this imbalance came when the act
of homicide was declared nonpunishable, unless intent and fore¬
thought could be proved. Of course, it was considered at least
naughty to fly in a rage and murder someone on impulse, and
there was a nominal punishment—imprisonment, for example—
but in practice this never worked, because so many defenses
were possible. Temporary insanity. Undue provocation. Self-
defense. Manslaughter, second-degree homicide, third degree,
fourth degree—it went on like that. It was up to the State to
prove that the killer had planned his killing in advance; only then
would a jury convict. And the jury, of course, had to waive
immunity and take a scop test, to prove the box hadn’t been
packed. But no defendant ever waived immunity.
A man’s home wasn’t his castle—not with the Eye able to
enter it at will and scan his past. The device couldn’t interpret,
and it couldn’t read his mind; it could only see and listen.
Consequently the sole remaining fortress of privacy was de¬
fended to the last ditch. No truth-serum, no hypnoanalysis, no
third-degree, no leading questions.
If, by viewing the prisoner’s past actions, the prosecution
could prove forethought and intent, O.K.
Otherwise, Sam Clay would go scot-free. Superficially, it
appeared as though Andrew Vanderman had, during a quarrel,
struck Clay across the face with a stingaree whip. Anyone who
has been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war can understand that,
at this point. Clay could plead temporary insanity and self-
defense, as well as undue provocation and possible justification.
48
Henry Kuttner
Only the curious cult of the Alaskan Flagellantes, who make the
stingaree whips for their ceremonials, know how to endure the
pain. The Flagellantes even like it, the pre-ritual drug they
swallow transmutes pain into pleasure. Not having swallowed this
drug, Sam Clay very naturally took steps to protect himself—
irrational steps, perhaps, but quite logical and defensible ones.
Nobody but Clay knew that he had intended to kill Vanderman
all along. That was the trouble. Clay couldn’t understand why he
felt so let down.
The screen flickered. It went dark. The engineer chuckled.
“My, my. Locked up in a dark closet at the age of four. What
one of those old-time psychiatrists would have made of that. Or do
I mean obimen? Shamans? I forget. They interpreted dreams,
anyway.”
“You’re confused. It—”
“Astrologers! No, it wasn’t either. The ones I mean went in
for symbolism. They used to spin prayer wheels and say ‘A rose
is a rose is a rose,’ didn’t they? To free the unconscious
mind?”
“You’ve got the typical layman’s attitude toward antique
psychiatric treatments.”
“Well, maybe they had something, at that. Look at quinine
and digitalis. The United Amazon natives used those long before
science discovered them. But why use eye of newt and toe of
frog? To impress the patient?”
“No, to convince themselves,” the Sociologist said. “In those
days the study of mental aberrations drew potential psychotics,
so naturally there was unnecessary mumbo-jumbo. Those medi¬
cos were trying to fix their own mental imbalance while they
treated their patients. But it’s a science today, not a religion.
We’ve found out how to allow for individual psychotic deviation
in the psychiatrist himself, so we’ve got a better chance of
finding true north. However, let’s get on with this. Try ultraviolet.
Oh, never mind. Somebody’s letting him out of that closet. The
devil with it. I think we’ve cut back far enough. Even if he was
frightened by a thunderstorm at the age of three months, that can
be filed under Gestalt and ignored. Let’s run through this
chronologically. Give it the screening for . . . let’s see. Incidents
involving these persons: Vanderman, Mrs. Vanderman, Josephine
Wells—and these places: the office, Vanderman’s apartment.
Clay’s place—”
“Got it.”
“Later we can recheck for complicating factors. Right now
PRIVATE EYE
49
we’ll run the superficial survey. Verdict first, evidence later,”
he added, with a grin. “All we need is a motive—”
“What about this?”
A girl was talking to Sam Clay. The background was an
apartment, grade B-2.
“I’m sorry, Sam. It’s just that. . . well, these things happen.”
“Yeah. Vanderman’s got something I haven’t got, apparently.”
“I’m in love with him.”
“Funny. I thought all along you were in love with me.”
“So did I . . . for a while.”
“Well, forget it. No, I’m not angry, Bea. I’ll even wish you
luck. But you must have been pretty certain how I’d react to
this.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Come to think of it, I’ve always let you call the shots.
Always.”
Secretly—and this the screen could not show—he thought: Let
her? I wanted it that way. It was so much easier to leave the
decisions up to her. Sure, she’s dominant, but I guess I’m just
the opposite. And now it’s happened again.
It always happens. I was loaded with weight-cloths from the
start. And I always felt I had to toe the line, or else. Vanderman—
that cocky, arrogant air of his. Reminds me of somebody. I was
locked up in a dark place, I couldn’t breathe. I forget. What . . .
who ... my father. No, I don’t remember. But my life’s been
like that. He always watched me, and I always thought some day
I’d do what I wanted—but I never did. Too late now. He’s been
dead quite a while.
He was always so sure I’d knuckle under. If I’d only defied
him once—
Somebody’s always pushing me in and closing the door. So I
can’t use my abilities. I can’t prove I’m competent. Prove it to
myself, to my father, to Bea, to the whole world. If only I
could—I’d like to push Vanderman into a dark place and lock
the door. A dark place, like a coffin. It would be satisfying to
surprise him that way. It would be fine if I killed Andrew
Vanderman.
“Well, that’s the beginning of a motive,” the sociologist said.
“Still, lots of people get jilted and don’t turn homicidal. Carry
on.”
“In my opinion, Bea attracted him because he wanted to be
bossed,” the engineer remarked. “He’d given up.”
50
Henry Kuttner
‘ ‘ Protective passivity. * *
The wire taps spun through the screening apparatus. A new
scene showed on the oblong panel. It was the Paradise Bar.
Anywhere you sat in the Paradise Bar, a competent robot
analyzer instantly studied your complexion and facial angles, and
switched on lights, in varying tints and intensities, that showed
you off to best advantage. The joint was popular for business
deals. A swindler could look like an honest man there. It was
also popular with women and slightly passl teleo talent. Sam
Clay looked rather like an ascetic young saint. Andrew Vanderman
looked noble, in a grim way, like Richard Coeur-de-Lion offer¬
ing Saladin his freedom, though he knew it wasn’t really a bright
thing to do. Noblesse oblige , his firm jaw seemed to say, as he
picked up the silver decanter and poured. In ordinary light,
Vanderman looked slightly more like a handsome bulldog. Also,
away from the Paradise Bar, he was redder around the chops, a
choleric man.
“As to that deal we were discussing,” Clay said, “you can go
to—”
The censoring juke box blared out a covering bar or two.
Vanderman’s reply was unheard as the music got briefly, louder,
and the lights shifted rapidly to keep pace with his sudden flush.
“It’s perfectly easy to outwit these censors,” Clay said. “They’re
keyed to familiar terms of profane abuse, not to circumlocutions.
If I said that the arrangement of your chromosomes would have
surprised your father . . . you see?” He was right. The music
stayed soft.
Vanderman swallowed nothing. “Take it easy,” he said. “I
can see why you’re upset. Let me say first of all—”
“Hijo—”
But the censor was proficient in Spanish dialects. Vanderman
was spared hearing another insult.
“—-that I offered you a job because I think you’re a very
capable man. You have potentialities. It’s not a bribe. Our
personal affairs should be kept out of this.”
All the same, Bea was engaged to me.”
“Clay, are you drunk?”
“Yes,” Clay said, and threw his drink into Vanderman’s face.
The music began to play Wagner very, very loudly. A few
minutes later, when the waiters interfered, Clay was supine and
bloody, with a mashed nose and a bruised cheek. Vanderman
had skinned his knuckles.
* * *
PRIVATE EYE
51
“That’s a motive/’ the engineer said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? But why did Clay wait a year and a half?
And remember what happened later. I wonder if die murder itself
was just a symbol? If Vanderman represented, say, what Clay
considered the tyrannical and oppressive force of society in
general—synthesized in the representative image ... oh, nonsense.
Obviously Clay was trying to prove something to himself though.
Suppose you cut forward now. I want to see this in normal
chronology, not backwards. What’s the next selection?*’
“Very suspicious. Clay got his nose fixed up and then went to
a murder trial/’
He thought: I can’t breathe. Too crowded in here. Shut up in a
box, a closet, a coffin, ignored by the spectators and the vested
authority on the bench. What would I do if I were in the dock,
like that chap? Suppose they convicted? That would spoil it all.
Another dark place— If I’d inherited the right genes, I’d have
been strong enough to beat up Vanderman. But I’ve been pushed
around too long.
I keep remembering that song.
Stray in the herd and the boss said kill it,
So I shot him in the rump with the handle of a skillet.
A deadly weapon that’s in normal usage wouldn’t appear
dangerous. But if it could be used homicidally—No, the Eye
could check on that. All you can conceal these days is motive.
But couldn’t the trick be reversed. Suppose I got Vanderman to
attack me with what he thought was the handle of a skillet, but
which I knew was a deadly weapon—
The trial Sam Clay was watching was fairly routine. One man
had killed another. Counsel for the defense contended that the
homicide had been a matter of impulse, and that, as a matter of
fact, only assault and battery plus culpable negligence, at worst,
could be proved, and the latter was canceled by an Act of God.
The fact that the defendant inherited the decedent’s fortune, in
Martial oil, made no difference. Temporary insanity was the
plea.
The prosecuting attorney showed films of what had happened
before the fact. True, the victim hadn’t been killed by the blow,
merely stunned. But the affair had occurred on an isolated beach,
and when the tide came in—
Act of God, the defense repeated hastily.
The screen showed the defendant, some days before his crime,
52
Henry Kuttner
looking up the tide-table in a news tape. He also, it appeared,
visited the site and asked a passing stranger if the beach was
often crowded. “Nope,” the stranger said, “it ain’t crowded
after sundown. Gits too cold. Won’t do you no good, though.
Too cold to swim then.”
One side matched Actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea —
“The act does not make a man guilty, unless the mind be also
guilty”—against Acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta —“By
the outward acts we are to judge of the inward thoughts.” Latin
legal basics were still valid, up to a point. A man’s past re¬
mained sacrosanct, provided—and here was the joker—that he
possessed the right of citizenship. And anyone accused of a
capital crime was automatically suspended from citizenship until
his innocence had been established.
Also, no past-tracing evidence could be introduced into a trial
unless it could be proved that it had direct connection with the
crime. The average citizen did have a right of privacy against
tracing. Only if accused of a serious crime was that forfeit, and
even then evidence uncovered could be used only in correlation
with the immediate charge. There were various loopholes, of
course, but theoretically a man was safe from espionage as long
as he stayed within the law.
Now a defendant stood in the dock, his past opened. The
prosecution showed recordings of a ginger blonde blackmailing
him, and that clinched the motive and the verdict—guilty. The
condemned man was led off in tears. Clay got up and walked out
of the court. From his appearance, he seemed to be thinking.
He was. He had decided that there was only one possible way
in which he could kill Vanderman and get away with it. He
couldn't conceal the deed itself, nor the actions leading up to it,
nor any written or spoken word. All he could hide were his own
thoughts. And, without otherwise betraying himself, he’d have
to kill Vanderman so that his act would appear justified. Which
meant covering his tracks for yesterday as well as for tomorrow
and tomorrow.
Now, thought Clay, this much can be assumed: If I stand to
lose by Vanderman’s death instead of gaining, that will help
considerably. I must juggle that somehow. But I mustn’t forget
that at present I have an obvious motive. First, he stole Bea.
Second, he beat me up.
So I must make it seem as though he’s done me a favor—
somehow.
I must have an opportunity to study Vanderman carefully, and
PRIVATE EYE
53
it must be a normal, logical, waterproof opportunity. Private
secretary. Something like that. The Eye’s in the future now, after
the fact, but it’s watching me—
I must remember that. It's watching me now!
All right. Normally, I’d have thought of murder, at this point.
That can’t and shouldn’t be disguised. I must work out of the
mood gradually, but meanwhile—
He smiled.
Going off to buy a gun, he felt uncomfortable, as though that
prescient Eye, years in the future, could with a wink summon the
police. But it was separated from him by a barrier of time that
only the natural processes could shorten. And, in fact, it had
been watching him since his birth. You could look at it that
way—
He could defy it. The Eye couldn’t read thoughts.
He bought the gun and lay in wait for Vanderman in a dark
alley. But first he got thoroughly drunk. Drunk enough to satisfy
the Eye.
After that—
“Feel better now?’’ Vanderman asked, pouring another coffee.
Clay buried his face in his hands.
“I was crazy,’’ he said, his voice muffled. “I must have
been. You’d better t-tum me over to the police.’’
“We can forget about that end of it, Clay. You were drunk,
that’s all. And I . . well, I—’’
“I pull a gun on you ... try to kill you . . . and you bring me
up to your place and—’ ’
“You didn’t use that gun, Clay. Remember that. You’re no
killer. All this has been my fault. I needn’t have been so blasted
tough with you,’’ Vanderman said, looking like Coeur-de-Lion
in spite of uncalculated amber fluorescence.
“I’m no good. I’m a failure. Every time I try to do something,
a man like you comes along and does it better. I’m a second-rater.’’
“Clay, stop talking like that. You’re just upset, that’s all.
Listen to me. You’re going to straighten up. I’m going to see
that you do. Starting tomorrow, we’ll work something out. Now
drink your coffee.’’
“You know,’’ Clay said, “you’re quite a guy.’’
So the magnanimous idiot’s fallen for it. Clay thought, as he
was drifting happily off to sleep. Fine. That begins to take care
of the Eye. Moreover, it starts the ball rolling with Vanderman.
Let a man do you a favor and he’s your pal. Well, Vanderman’s
54
Henry Kuttner
going to do me a lot more favors. In fact, before I’m through.
I’ll have every motive for wanting to keep him alive.
Every motive visible to the naked Eye.
Probably Clay had not heretofore applied his talents in the
right direction, for there was nothing second-rate about the way
he executed his homicide plan. In that, he proved very capable.
He needed a suitable channel for his ability, and perhaps he
needed a patron. Vanderman fulfilled that function; probably it
salved his conscience for stealing Bea. Being the man he was,
Vanderman needed to avoid even the appearance of ignobility.
Naturally strong and ruthless, he told himself he was sentimental.
His sentimentality never reached the point of actually incon¬
veniencing him, and Clay knew enough to stay within the limits.
Nevertheless it is nerve-racking to know you’re living under the
scrutiny of an extratemporal Eye. As he walked into the lobby of
the V Building a month later, Clay realized that light-vibrations
reflected from his own body were driving irretrievably into the
polished onyx walls and floor, photographing themselves there,
waiting for a machine to unlock them, some day, some time, for
some man perhaps in this very city, who as yet didn’t know even
the name of Sam Clay. Then, sitting in his relaxer in the spiral
lift moving swiftly up inside the walls, he knew that those walls
were capturing his image, stealing it, like some superstition he
remembered . . . ah?
Vanderman’s private secretary greeted him. Clay let his gaze
wander freely across that young person’s neatly dressed figure
and mildly attractive face. She said that Mr. Vanderman was
out, and the appointment was for three, not two, wasn’t it? Clay
referred to a notebook. He snapped his fingers.
“Three—you’re right, Miss Wells. I was so sure it was two I
didn’t even bother to check up. Do you think he might be back
sooner? I mean, is he out, or in conference?”
“He’s out, all right, Mr. Clay,” Miss Wells said. “I don’t
think he’ll be back much sooner than three. I’m sorry.”
“Well, may I wait in here?”
She smiled at him efficiently. “Of course. There’s a stereo
and the magazine spools are in that case.”
She went back to her work, and Clay skimmed through an
article about the care and handling of lunar Richards. It gave him
an opportunity to start a conversation by asking Miss Wells if
she liked Richards. It turned out that she had no opinion whatso¬
ever of Richards but the ice had been broken.
PRIVATE EYE
55
This is the cocktail acquaintance. Clay thought. I may have a
broken heart, but, naturally, I’m lonesome.
The trick wasn’t to get engaged to Miss Wells so much as to
fall in love with her convincingly. The Eye never slept. Clay was
beginning to wake at night with a nervous start, and lie there
looking up at the ceiling. But darkness was no shield.
“The question is,” said the sociologist at this point, “whether
or not Clay was acting for an audience.”
“You mean us?”
“Exactly. It just occurred to me. Do you think he’s been
behaving perfectly naturally?”
The engineer pondered.
“I’d say yes. A man doesn’t marry a girl only to carry out
some other plan, does he? After all, he’d get himself involved in
a whole new batch of responsibilities.”
“Clay hasn’t married Josephine Wells yet, however,” the
sociologist countered. “Besides, that responsibility angle might
have applied a few hundred years ago, but not now.” He went
off at random. “Imagine a society where, after divorce, a man
was forced to support a perfectly healthy, competent woman! It
was vestigial, I know—a throwback to the days when only males
could earn a living—but imagine the sort of women who were
willing to accept such support. That was reversion to infancy if I
ever—”
The engineer coughed.
“Oh,” the sociologist said. “Oh . . . yes. The question is,
would Clay have got himself engaged to a woman unless he
really—”
“Engagements can be broken.”
“This one hasn’t been broken yet, as far as we know. And we
know .”
A normal man wouldn’t plan on marrying a girl he didn’t care
anything about, unless he had some stronger motive—I’ll go
along that far.”
“But how normal is Clay?” the sociologist wondered. “Did
he know in advance we’d check back on his past? Did you notice
that he cheated at solitaire?”
“Proving?”
“There are all kinds of trivial things you don’t do if you think
people are looking. Picking up a penny in the street, drinking
soup out of the bowl, posing before a mirror—the sort of foolish
or petty things everyone does when alone. Either Clay’s innocent,
or he’s a very clever man—”
56
Henry Kuttner
* * *
He was a very clever man. He never intended the engagement
to get as far as marriage, though he knew that in one respect
marriage would be a precaution. If a man talks in his sleep, his
wife will certainly mention the fact. Clay considered gagging
himself at night if the necessity should arise. Then he realized
that if he talked in his sleep at all, there was no insurance against
talking too much the very first time he had an auditor. He
couldn't risk such a break. But there was no necessity, after all.
Clay's problem, when he thought it over, was simply: How can I
be sure I don’t talk in my sleep?
He solved that easily enough by renting a narcohypnotic sup¬
plementary course in common trade dialects. This involved study¬
ing while awake and getting the information repeated in his ear
during slumber. As a necessary preparation for the course, he was
instructed to set up a recorder and chart the depth of his sleep, so
the narcohypnosis could be keyed to his individual rhythms. He
did this several times, rechecked onqe a month thereafter, and
was satisfied. There was no need to gag himself at night.
He was glad to sleep provided he didn’t dream. He had to take
sedatives after a while. At night, there was relief from the
knowledge that an Eye watched him always, an Eye that could
bring him to justice, an Eye whose omnipotence he could not
challenge in the open. But he dreamed about the Eye.
Vanderman had given him a job in the organization, which
was enormous. Clay was merely a cog, which suited him well
enough, for the moment. He didn’t want any more favors yet.
Not till he had found out the extent of Miss Wells* duties—
Josephine, her Christian name was. That took several months,
but by that time friendship was ripening into affection. So Clay
asked Vanderman for another job. He specified. It wasn’t obvious,
but he was asking for work that would, presently, fit him for
Miss Wells’ duties.
Vanderman probably still felt guilty about Bea; he’d married
her and she was in Antarctica now, at the Casino. Vanderman
was due to join her, so he scribbled a memorandum, wished
Clay good luck, and went to Antarctica, bothered by no stray
pangs of conscience. Clay improved the hour by courting Jose¬
phine ardently.
From what he had heard about the new Mrs. Vanderman, he
felt secretly relieved. Not long ago, when he had been content to
remain passive, the increasing dominance of Bea would have
satisfied him, but no more. He was learning self-reliance, and
liked it. These days, Bea was behaving rather badly. Given all
PRIVATE EYE
57
the money and freedom she could use, she had too much time on
her hands. Once in a while Clay heard rumors that made him
smile secretly. Vanderman wasn’t having an easy time of it. A
dominant character, Bea—but Vanderman was no weakling
himself.
After a while Clay told his employer he wanted to marry
Josephine Wells. “I guess that makes us square,” he said. “You
took Bea away from me and I’m taking Josie away from you.”
“Now wait a minute,” Vanderman said. “I hope you don’t—”
“My fiancee, your secretary. That’s all. The thing is, Josie
and I are in love.” He poured it on, but carefully. It was easier
to deceive Vanderman than the Eye, with its trained technicians
and forensic sociologists looking through it. He thought, sometime,
of those medieval pictures of an immense eye, and that reminded
him of something vague and distressing, though he couldn’t
isolate the memory.
After all, what could Vanderman do? He arranged to have
Clay given a raise. Josphine, always conscientious, offered to
keep on working for a while, till office routine was straightened
out, but it never did get straightened out, somehow. Clay deftly
saw to that by keeping Josephine busy. She didn’t have to bring
work home to her apartment, but she brought it, and Clay
gradually began to help her when he dropped by. His job, plus
the narcohypnotic courses, had already trained him for this sort
of tricky organizational work. Vanderman’s business was highly
specialized—planet-wide exports and imports, and what with
keeping track of specific groups, seasonal trends, sectarian
holidays, and so forth, Josephine, as a sort of animated memoran¬
dum book for Vanderman, had a more than full-time job.
She and Clay postponed marriage for a time. Clay—naturally
enough—began to appear mildly jealous of Josephine’s work, and
she said she’d quit soon. But one night she stayed on at the
office, and he went out in a pet and got drunk. It just happened
to be raining that night. Clay got tight enough to walk unpro¬
tected through the drizzle, and to fall asleep at home in his wet
clothes. He came down with influenza. As he was recovering,
Josephine got it.
Under the circumstances. Clay stepped in—purely a temporary
job—and took over his fiancee’s duties. Office routine was
extremely complicated that week, and only Clay knew the ins
and outs of it. The arrangement saved Vanderman a certain
amount of inconvenience, and, when the situation resolved itself,
Josephine had a subsidiary job and Clay was Vanderman’s pri¬
vate secretary.
58
Henry Kuttner
“I’d better know more about him,” Clay said to Josephine.
“After all, there must be a lot of habits and foibles he’s got that
need to be catered to. If he wants lunch ordered up, I don’t want
to get smoked tongue and find out he’s allergic to it. What about
his hobbies?”
But he was careful not to pump Josephine too hard, because of
the Eye. He still needed sedatives to sleep.
The sociologist rubbed his forehead.
“Let’s take a break,” he suggested. “Why does a guy want to
commit murder anyway?”
“For profit, one sort or another.”
“Only partly, I’d say. The other part is an unconscious desire
to be punished—usually for something else. That’s why you get
accident prones. Ever think about what happens to murderers
who feel guilty and yet who aren’t punished by the Law? They
must live a rotten sort of life—always stepping in front of
speedsters, cutting themselves with an ax—accidentally; acciden¬
tally touching wires full of juice—’ ’
“Conscience, eh?”
“A long time ago, people thought God sat in the sky with a
telescope and watched everything they did. They really lived
pretty carefully, in the Middle Ages—the first Middle Ages, I
mean. Then there was the era of disbelief, where people had
nothing to believe in very strongly—and finally we get this.” He
nodded toward the screen. “A universal memory. By extension,
it’s a universal social conscience, an externalized one. It’s ex¬
actly the same as the medieval concept of God—omniscience.”
“But not omnipotence.”
“Mm.”
All in all. Clay kept the Eye in mind for a year and a half.
Before he said or did anything whatsoever, he reminded himself
of the Eye, and made certain that he wasn’t revealing his motive
to the judging future. Of course, there was—would be—an Ear,
too, but that was a little too absurd. One couldn’t visualize a
large, disembodied Ear decorating the wall like a plate in a plate
holder. All the same, whatever he said would be as important
evidence—some time—as what he did. So Sam Clay was very
careful indeed, and behaved like Caesar’s wife. He wasn’t ex¬
actly defying authority, but he was certainly circumventing it.
Superficially Vanderman was more like Caesar, and his wife
was not above reproach, these days. She had too much money to
play with. And she was finding her husband too strong-willed a
PRIVATE EYE
59
person to be completely satisfactory. There was enough of the
matriarch in Bea to make her feel rebellion against Andrew
Vanderman, and there was a certain lack of romance. Vanderman
had little time for her. He was busy these days, involved with a
whole string of deals which demanded much of his time. Clay,
of course, had something to do with that. His interest in his new
work was most laudable. He stayed up nights plotting and plan¬
ning as though expecting Vanderman to make him a fall partner.
In fact, he even suggested this possibility to Josephine. He
wanted it on the record. The marriage date had been set, and
Clay wanted to move before then; he had no intention of being
drawn into a marriage of convenience after the necessity had
been removed.
One thing he did, which had to be handled carefully, was to
get the whip. Now Vanderman was a fingerer. He liked to have
something in his hands while he talked. Usually it was a crystal¬
line paper weight, with a miniature thunderstorm in it, complete
with lightning, when it was shaken. Clay put this where Vanderman
would be sure to knock it off and break it. Meanwhile, he had
plugged one deal with Callisto Ranches for the sole purpose of
getting a whip for Vanderman’s desk. The natives were proud of
their leatherwork and their silversmithing, and a nominal make¬
weight always went with every deal they closed. Thus, presently,
a handsome miniature whip, with Vanderman’s initials on it, lay
on the desk, coiled into a loop, acting as a paperweight except
when he picked it up and played with it while he talked.
The other weapon Clay wanted was already there—an antique
paper knife, once called a surgical scalpel. He never let his gaze
rest on it too long, because of the Eye.
The other whip came. He absentmindedly put it in his desk
and pretended to forget it. It was a sample of the whips made by
the Alaskan Flagellantes for use in their ceremonies, and was
wanted because of some research being made into the pain-neut-
alizing drugs the Flagellantes used. Clay, of course, had engi¬
neered this deal, too. There was nothing suspicious about that;
the firm stood to make a sound profit. In fact, Vanderman had
promised him a percentage bonus at the end of the year on every
deal he triggered. It would be quite a lot. It was December, a
year and a half had passed since Clay first recognized that the
Eye would seek him out.
He felt fine. He was careful about the sedatives, and his
nerves, though jangled, were nowhere near the snapping point. It
had been a strain, but he had trained himself so that he would
make no slips. He visualized the Eye in the walls, in the ceiling.
60
Henry Kuttner
in the sky, everywhere he went. It was the only way to play
completely safe. And very soon now it would pay off. But he
would have to do it soon; such a nervous strain could not be
continued indefinitely.
A few details remained. He carefully arranged matters—under
the Eye’s very nose, so to speak—so that he was offered a
well-paying position with another firm. He turned it down.
And one night an emergency happened to arise so that Clay,
very logically, had to go to Vanderman’s apartment.
Vanderman wasn’t there; Bea was. She had quarreled vio¬
lently with her husband. Moreover, she had been drinking.
(This, too, he had expected.) If the situation had not worked out
exactly as he wanted, he would have tried again—and again—
but there was no need.
Clay was a little politer than necessary. Perhaps too polite,
certainly Bea, that incipient matriarch, was led down the garden
path, a direction she was not unwilling to take. After all, she had
married Vanderman for his money, found him as dominant as
herself, and now saw Clay as an exaggerated symbol of both
romance and masculine submissiveness.
The camera eye hidden in the wall, in a decorative bas-relief,
was grinding away busily, spooling up its wiretape in a way that
indicated Vanderman was a suspicious as well as a jealous
husband. But Clay knew about this gadget, too. At the suitable
moment he stumbled against the wall in such a fashion that the
device broke. Then, with only that other eye spying on him, he
suddenly became so virtuous that it was a pity Vanderman
couldn’t witness his volte face .
“Listen, Bea,’’ he said, “I’m sorry, but I didn’t understand.
It’s no good. I’m not in love with you anymore. I was once,
sure, but that was quite a while ago. There’s somebody else, and
you ought to know it by now.’’
“You still love me,’’ Bea said with intoxicated firmness.
“We belong together.*’
“Bea. Please. I hate to have to say this, but I’m grateful to
Andrew Vanderman for marrying you. I . . . well, you got what
you wanted, and I’m getting what I want. Let’s leave it at that.*’
“I’m used to getting what I want, Sam. Opposition is some¬
thing I don’t like. Especially when I know you really—’’
She said a good deal more, and so did Clay—he was perhaps
unnecessarily harsh. But he had to make the point, for the Eye,
that he was no longer jealous of Vanderman.
He made the point.
PRIVATE EYE
61
The next morning he got to the office before Vanderman,
cleaned up his desk, and discovered the stingaree whip still in its
box. “Oops,” he said, snapping his fingers—the Eye watched,
and this was the crucial period. Perhaps it would all be over
within the hour. Every move from now on would have to be
specially calculated in advance, and there could be no slightest
deviation. The Eye was everywhere—literally everywhere.
He opened the box,, took out the whip, and went into the inner
sanctum. He tossed the whip on Vanderman’s desk, so carelessly
that a stylus rack toppled. Clay rearranged everything, leaving
the stingaree whip near the edge of the desk, and placing the
Callistan silver-leather whip at the back, half concealed behind
the interoffice visor-box. He didn’t allow himself more than a
casual sweeping glance to make sure the paper knife was still
there.
Then he went out for coffee.
Half an hour later he got back, picked up a few letters for
signature from the rack, and walked into Vanderman’s office.
Vanderman looked up from behind his desk. He had changed a
little in a year and a half; he was looking older, less noble, more
like an aging bulldog. Once, Clay thought coldly, this man stole
my fiancee and beat me up.
Careful. Remember the Eye.
There was no need to do anything but follow the plan and let
events take their course. Vanderman had seen the spy films, all
right, up to the point where they had gone blank, when Clay fell
against the wall. Obviously he hadn’t really expected Clay to
show up this morning. But to see the louse grinning hello,
walking across the room, putting some letters down on his
desk—
Clay was counting on Vanderman’s short temper, which had
not improved over the months. Obviously the man had been
simply sitting there, thinking unpleasant thoughts, and just as
Clay had known would happen, he’d picked up the whip and
begun to finger it. But it was the stingaree whip this time.
“Morning,” Clay said cheerfully to his stunned employer. His
smile became one-sided. “I’ve been waiting for you to check
this letter to the Kirghiz kovar-breeders. Can we find a market
for two thousand of those ornamental horns?”
It was at this point that Vanderman, bellowing, jumped to his
feet, swung the whip, and sloshed Clay across the face. There is
probably nothing more painful than the bite of a stingaree whip.
Clay staggered back. He had not known it would hurt so
62
Henry Kuttner
much. For an instant the shock of the blow knocked every other
consideration out of his head, and blind anger was all that
remained.
Remember the Eye!
He remembered it. There were dozens of trained men watch¬
ing everything he did just now. Literally he stood on an open
stage surrounded by intent observers who made notes on every
expression of his face, every muscular flection, every breath he
drew.
In a moment Vanderman would be dead—but Sam Clay would
not be alone. An invisible audience from the future was fixing
him with cold, calculating eyes. He had one more thing to do
and the job would be over. Do it—carefully, carefully!—while
they watched.
Time stopped for him. The job would be over.
It was very curious. He had rehearsed this series of actions so
Often in the privacy of his mind that his body was going through
with it now, without further instructions. His body staggered
back from the blow, recovered balance, glared at Vanderman in
shocked fury, poised for a dive at that paper knife in plain sight
on the desk.
That was what the outward and visible Sam Clay was doing.
But the inward and spiritual Sam Clay went through quite a
different series of actions.
The job would be over.
And what was he going to do after that?
The inward and spiritual murderer stood fixed with dismay
and surprise, staring at a perfectly empty future. He had never
looked beyond this moment. He had made no plans for his life
beyond the death of Vanderman. But now—he had no enemy but
Vanderman. When Vanderman was dead, what would he fix
upon to orient his life? What would he work at then? His job
would be gone, too. And he liked his job.
Suddenly he knew how much he liked it. He was good at it.
For the first time in his life, he had found a job he could do
really well.
You can’t live a year and a half in a new environment without
acquiring new goals. The change had come imperceptibly. He
was a good operator; he’d discovered that he could be successful.
He didn’t have to kill Vanderman to prove that to himself. He’d
proved it already without committing murder.
In that time-stasis which had brought everything to a full stop
he looked at Vanderman’s red face and he thought of Bea, and of
PRIVATE EYE
63
Vanderman as he had come to know him—and he didn’t want to
be a murderer.
He didn’t want Vanderman dead. He didn’t want Bea. The
thought of her made him feel a little sick. Perhaps that was
because he himself had changed from passive to active. He no
longer wanted or needed a dominant woman. He could make his
own decisions. If he were choosing now, it would be someone
more like Josephine—
Josephine. That image before his mind’s stilled eye was sud¬
denly very pleasant. Josephine with her mild, calm prettiness,
her admiration for Sam Clay the successful businessman, the
rising young importer in Vanderman, Inc. Josephine whom he
was going to marry—Of course he was going to marry her. He
loved Josephine. He loved his job. All he wanted was the status
quo, exactly as he had achieved it. Everything was perfect right
now—as of maybe thirty seconds ago.
But that was a long time ago—thirty seconds. A lot can
happen in a half a minute. A lot had happened. Vanderman was
coming at him again, the whip raised. Clay’s nerves crawled at
the anticipation of its burning impact across his face a second
time. If he could get hold of Vanderman’s wrist before he struck
again—if he could talk fast enough—
The crooked smile was still on his face. It was part of the
pattern, in some dim way he did not quite understand. He was
acting in response to conditioned reflexes set up over a period of
many months of rigid self-training. His body was already in
action. iVll that had taken place in his mind had happened so fast
there was no physical hiatus at all. His body knew its job and it
was doing the job. It was lunging forward toward the desk and
the knife, and he could not stop it.
All this had happened before. It had happened in his mind, the
only place where Sam Clay had known real freedom in the past
year and a half. In all that time he had forced himself to realize
that the Eye was watching every outward move he made. He had
planned each action in advance and schooled himself to carry it
through. Scarcely once had he let himself act purely on impulse.
Only in following the plan exactly was there safety. He had
indoctrinated himself too successfully.
Something was wrong. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. He was
still afraid, weak, failing—
He lurched against the desk, clawed at the paper knife, and,
knowing failure, drove it into Vanderman’s heart.
64 Henry Kuttner
“It’s a tricky case/’ the forensic sociologist said to the engineer.
“Very tricky.”
“Want me to run it again?”
“No, not right now. I’d like to think it over. Clay . . . that
firm that offered him another job. The offer’s withdrawn now,
isn’t it? Yes, I remember—they’re fussy about the morals of
their employees. It’s insurance or something, I don’t know.
Motive. Motive, now.”
The sociologist looked at the engineer.
The engineer said: “A year and a half ago he had a motive.
But a week ago he had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
He’s lost his job and that bonus, he doesn’t want Mrs. Vanderman
anymore, and as for that beating Vanderman once gave him . . .
ah?”
“Well, he did try to shoot Vanderman once, and he couldn’t,
remember? Even though he was full of Dutch courage. But—
something’s wrong. Clay’s been avoiding even the appearance of
evil a little too carefully. Only I can’t put my finger on anything,
blast it.”
“What about tracing back his life further? We only got to his
fourth year.”
“There couldn’t be anything useful that long ago. It’s obvious
he was afraid of his father and hated him, too. Typical stuff,
basic psych. The father symbolizes judgment to him. I’m very
much afraid Sam Clay is going to get off scot-free.”
“But if you think there’s something haywire—”
“The burden of proof is up to us,” the sociologist said.
The visor sang. A voice spoke softly.
“No, I haven’t got the answer yet. Now? All right. I’ll drop
over.”
He stood up.
“The D.A. wants a consultation. I’m not hopeful, though. I’m
afraid the State’s going to lose this case. That’s the trouble with
the externalized conscience—”
He didn’t amplify. He went out, shaking his head, leaving the
engineer staring speculatively at the screen. But within five
minutes he was assigned to another job—the bureau was
understaffed—and he didn’t have a chance to investigate on his
own until a week later. Then it didn’t matter anymore.
For, a week later, Sam Clay was walking out of the court an
acquitted man. Bea Vanderman was waiting for him at the foot
of the ramp. She wore black, but obviously her heart wasn’t in
it.
PRIVATE EYE
65
“Sam,** she said.
He looked at her.
He felt a little dazed. It was all over. Everything had worked
out exactly according to plan. And nobody was watching him
now. The Eye had closed. The invisible audience had put on its
hats and coats and left the theater of Sam Clay’s private life.
From now on he could do and say precisely what he liked, with
no censoring watcher’s omnipresence to check him. He could act
on impulse again.
He had outwitted society. He had outwitted the Eye and all its
minions in all their technological glory. He, Sam Clay, private
citizen. It was a wonderful thing, and he could not understand
why it left him feeling so flat.
That had been a nonsensical moment, just before the murder.
The moment of relenting. They say you get the same instant’s
frantic rejection on the verge of a good many important decisions—
just before you marry, for instance. Or—what was it? Some
other common instance he’d often heard of. For a second it
eluded him. Then he had it. The hour before marriage—and the
instant after suicide. After you’ve pulled the trigger, or jumped
off the bridge. The instant of wild revulsion when you’d give
anything to undo the irrevocable. Only, you can’t. It’s too late.
The thing is done.
Well, he’d been a fool. Luckily, it had been too late. His body
took over and forced him to success he’d trained it for. About
the job—it didn’t matter. He’d get another. He’d proved himself
capable. If he could outwit the Eye itself, what job existed he
couldn’t lick if he tried? Except—nobody knew exactly how
good he was. How could he prove his capabilities? It was
infuriating to achieve such phenomenal success after a lifetime of
failures, and never to get the credit for it. How many men must
have tried and failed where he had tried and succeeded? Rich
men, successful men, brilliant men who had yet failed in the
final test of all—the contest with the Eye, their own lives at
stake. Only Sam Clay had passed that most important test in the
world—and he could never claim credit for it.
. . knew they wouldn’t convict,” Bea’s complacent voice
was saying.
Clay blinked at her. “What?”
“I said I’m so glad you’re free, darling. I knew they wouldn’t
convict you. I knew that from the very beginning.” She smiled
at him, and for the first time it occurred to him that Bea looked a
little like a bulldog. It was something about her lower jaw. He
thought that when her teeth were closed together the lower set
66
Henry Kuttner
probably rested just outside the upper. He had an instant’s
impulse to ask her about it. Then he decided he had better not.
“You knew, did you?” he said.
She squeezed his arm. What an ugly lower jaw that was. How
odd he’d never noticed it before. And behind the heavy lashes,
how small her eyes were. How mean.
“Let’s go where we can be alone,” Bea said, clinging to him.
“There’s such a lot to talk about.”
“We are alone,” Clay said, diverted for an instant to his
original thoughts. “Nobody’s watching,” He glanced up at the
sky and down at the mosaic pavement. He drew a long breath
and let it out slowly. “Nobody,” he said.
“My speeder’s parked right over here. We can—”
“Sorry, Bea.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got business to attend to.”
“Forget business. Don’t you understand that we’re free now,
both of us?”
He had a horrible feeling he knew what she meant.
“Wait a minute,” he said, because this seemed the quickest
way to end it. “I killed your husband, Bea. Don’t forget that.”
“You were acquitted. It was self-defense. The court said so.”
“It—” He paused, glanced up quickly at the high wall of the
Justice Building, and began a one-sided, mirthless smile. It was
all right; there was no Eye now. There never would be, again.
He was unwatched.
“You mustn’t feel guilty, even within yourself,” Bea said
firmly. “It wasn’t your fault. It simply wasn’t. You’ve got to
remember that. You couldn't have killed Andrew except by
accident, Sam, so—”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, after all. I know the prosecution kept trying to prove
you’d planned to kill Andrew all along, but you mustn’t let what
they said put any ideas in your head. I know you, Sam. I knew
Andrew. You couldn’t have planned a thing like that, and even if
you had, it wouldn’t have worked.”
~ The half-smile died.
“It wouldn’t?”
She looked at him steadily.
“Why, you couldn’t have managed it,” she said. “Andrew
was the better man, and we both know it. He’d have been too
clever to fall for anything—”
“Anything a second-rater like me could dream up?” Clay
swallowed. His lips tightened. “Even you— What’s the idea?
PRIVATE EYE
67
What’s your angle now—that we second-raters ought to get
together?”
“Come on,” she said, and slipped her arm through his. Clay
hung back for a second. Then he scowled, looked back at the
Justice Building, and followed Bea toward her speeder.
The engineer had a free period. He was finally able to investi¬
gate Sam Clay’s early childhood. It was purely academic now,
but he liked to indulge his curiosity. He traced Clay back to the
dark closet, when the boy was four, and used ultraviolet. Sam
was huddled in a comer, crying silently, staring up with fright-,
ened eyes at a top shelf.
What was on that shelf the engineer could not see.
He kept the beam focused on the closet and cast back rapidly
through time. The closet often opened and closed, and some¬
times Sam Clay was locked in it as punishment, but the upper
shelf held its mystery until—
It was in reverse. A woman reached to that shelf, took down
an object, walked backward out of the closet to Sam Clay’s
bedroom, and went to the wall by the door. This was unusual,
for generally it was Sam’s father who was warden of the closet.
She hung up a framed picture of a single huge staring eye
floating in space. There was a legend under it. The letters spelled
out: THOU GOD SEEST ME.
The engineer kept on tracing. After a while it was night. The
child was in bed, sitting up wide-eyed, afraid. A man’s footsteps
sounded on the stair. The scanner told all secrets but those of the
inner mind. The man was Sam’s father, coming up to punish him
for some childish crime committed earlier. Moonlight fell upon
the wall beyond which the footsteps approached showing how
the wall quivered a little to the vibrations of the feet, and the Eye
in its frame quivered, too. The boy seemed to brace himself. A
defiant half-smile showed on his mouth, crooked, unsteady.
This time he’d keep that smile, no matter what happened.
When it was over he’d still have it, so his father could see it, and
the Eye could see it and they’d know he hadn’t given in. He
hadn’t . . . he—
The door opened.
He couldn’t help it. The smile faded and was gone.
“Well, what was eating him?” the engineer demanded.
The sociologist shrugged. “You could say he never did really
grow up. It’s axiomatic that boys go through a phase of rivalry
with their fathers. Usually that’s sublimated; the child grows up
68
Henry Kuttner
and wins, in one way or another. But Sam Clay didn’t. I suspect
he developed an externalized conscience very early. Symbolizing
partly his father, partly God, an Eye and society—which fulfills
the role of protective, punishing parent, you know.”
“It still isn’t evidence.”
“We aren’t going to get any evidence on Sam Clay. But that
doesn’t mean he’s got away with anything, you know. He’s
always been afraid to assume the responsibilities of maturity. He
never took on an optimum challenge. He was afraid to succeed at
anything because that symbolic Eye of his might smack him
down. When he was a kid, he might have solved his entire
problem by kicking his old man in the shins. Sure, he’d have got
a harder whaling, but he’d have made some move to assert his
individuality. As it is, he waited too long. And then he defied
the wrong thing, and it wasn’t really defiance, basically. Too
late now. His formative years are past. The thing that might
really solve Clay’s problem would be his conviction for murder—
but he’s been acquitted. If he’d been convicted, then he could
prove to the world that he’d hit back. He’d kicked his father in
the shins, kept that defiant smile on his face, killed Andrew
Vanderman. I think that’s what he actually has wanted all
along—recognition. Proof of his own ability to assert himself.
He had to work hard to cover his tracks—if he made any—but
that was part of the game. By winning it he’s lost. The normal
ways of escape are closed to him. He always had an Eye looking
down at him.”
“Then the acquittal stands?”
“There’s still no evidence. The State’s lost its case. But I . . .
I don’t think Sam Clay has won his. Something will happen.”
He sighed. “It’s inevitable, I’m afraid. Sentence first, you see.
Verdict afterward. The sentence was passed on Clay a long time
ago.”
Sitting across from him in the Paradise Bar, behind a silver
decanter of brandy in the center of the table, Bea looked lovely
and hateful. It was the lights that made her lovely. They even
managed to cast their shadows over that bulldog chin, and under
her thick lashes the small, mean eyes acquired an illusion of
beauty. But she still looked hateful. The lights could do nothing
about that. They couldn’t cast shadows into Sam Clay’s private
mind or distort the images there.
He thought of Josephine. He hadn’t made up his mind fully
yet about that. But if he didn’t quite know what he wanted, there
was no shadow of doubt about what he didn't want—no possible
doubt whatever.
PRIVATE EYE
69
“You need me, Sam,” Bea told him over her brimming glass.
“I can stand on my own feet. I don’t need anybody.”
It was the indulgent way she looked at him. It was the smile
that showed her teeth. He could see as clearly as if he had X-ray
vision how the upper teeth would close down inside the lower
when she shut her mouth. There would be a lot of strength in a
jaw like that. He looked at her neck and saw the thickness of it,
and thought how firmly she was getting her grip upon him, how
she maneuvered for position and waited to lock her bulldog
clamp deep into the fabric of his life again.
“I’m going to marry Josephine, you know,” he said.
“No, you’re not. You aren’t the man for Josephine. I know
that girl, Sam. For a while you may have had her convinced you
were a go-getter. But she’s bound to find out the truth. You’d be
miserable together. You need me, Sam darling. You don’t know
what you want. Look at the mess you got into when you tried to
act on your own. Oh, Sam, why don’t you stop pretending? You
know you never were a planner. You . . . what’s the matter,
Sam?”
His sudden burst of laughter had startled both of them. He
tried to answer her, but the laughter wouldn’t let him. He lay
back in his chair and shook with it until he almost strangled. He
had come so close, so desperately close to bursting out with a
boast that would have been confession. Just to convince the
woman. Just to shut her up. He must care more about her good
opinion than he had realized until now. But that last absurdity
was too much. It was only ridiculous now. Sam Clay, not a
planner.
How good it was to let himself laugh, now. To let himself go,
without having to think ahead. Acting on impulse again, after
those long months of rigid repression. No audience from the
future was clustering around this table, analyzing the quality of
his laughter, observing that it verged on hysteria. Who cared? He
deserved a little blow-off like this, after all he’d been through.
He’d risked so much, and achieved so much—and in the end
gained nothing, not even glory except in his own mind. He’d
gained nothing, really, except the freedom to be hysterical if he
felt like it. He laughed and laughed and laughed, hearing the
shrill note of lost control in his own voice and not caring.
People were turning to stare. The bartender looked over at him
uneasily, getting ready to move if this went on. Bea stood up,
leaned across the table, shook him by the shoulder.
“Sam, what’s the matter? Sam, do get hold of yourself!
70 Henry Kuttner
You’re making a spectacle of me, Sam! What are you laughing
at?”
With a tremendous effort he forced the laughter back in his
throat. His breath still came heavily and little bursts of merri¬
ment kept bubbling up so that he could hardly speak, but he got
the words out somehow. They were probably the first words he
had spoken without rigid consorship since he first put his plan
into operation. And the words were these.
4 Tm laughing at the way I fooled you. I fooled everybody!
You think I didn’t know what I was doing every minute of the
time? You think I wasn’t planning, every step of the way? It
took me eighteen months to do it, but I killed Andrew Vanderman
with malice aforethought, and nobody can ever prove I did it.”
He giggled foolishly. “I just wanted you to know,” he added in
a mild voice.
And it wasn’t until he got his breath back and began to
experience that feeling of incredible, delightful, incomparable
relief that he knew what he had done.
She was looking at him without a flicker of expression on her
face. Total blank was all that showed. There was a dead silence
for a quarter of a minute. Clay had the feeling that his words
must have rung from the roof, that in a moment the police would
come in to hale him away. But the words had been quietly
spoken. No one had heard but Bea.
And now, at last, Bea moved. She answered him, but not in
words. The bulldog face convulsed suddenly and overflowed
with laughter.
As he listened, Clay felt all that flood of glorious relief ebbing
away. For he saw that she did not believe him. And there was no
way he could prove the truth.
“Oh, you silly little man,” Bea gasped when words came
back to her. “You had me almost convinced for a minute. I
almost believed you. I—” Laughter silenced her again, con¬
sciously silvery laughter that made heads turn. That conscious
note in it warned him that she was up to something. Bea had had
an idea. His own thoughts outran hers and he knew in an instant
before she spoke exactly what the idea was and how she would
apply it. He said: “I am going to marry Josephine,” in the very
instant that Bea spoke.
“You’re going to marry me,” she said flatly. “You’ve got to.
You don’t know your own mind, Sam. I know what’s best for
you and I’ll see you dp it. Do you understand me, Sam?”
“The police won’t realize that was only a silly boast,” she
PRIVATE EYE
71
told him. “They’ll believe you. You wouldn’t want me to tell
them what you just said, would you, Sam?’’
He looked at her in silence, seeing no way out. This dilemma
had sharper horns than anything he could have imagined. For
Bea did not and would not believe him, no matter how he
yearned to convince her, while the police undoubtedly would
believe him, to the undoing of his whole investment in time,
effort, and murder. He had said it. It was engraved upon the
walls and in the echoing air, waiting for that invisible audience
in the future to observe. No one was listening now, but a word
from Bea could make them reopen the case.
A word from Bea.
He looked at her, still in silence, but with a certain cool
calculation beginning to dawn in the back of his mind.
For a moment Sam Clay felt very tired indeed. In that moment
he encompassed a good deal of tentative future time. In his mind
he said yes to Bea, married her, lived an indefinite period as her
husband. And he saw what that life would be like. He saw the
mean small eyes watching him, the relentlessly gripping jaw set,
the tyranny that would emerge slowly or not slowly, depending
on the degree of his subservience, until he was utterly at the
mercy of the woman who had been Andrew Vanderman’s widow.
Sooner or later , he thought clearly to himself, I'd kill her.
He’d have to kill. That sort of life, with that sort of woman,
wasn’t a life Sam Clay could live, indefinitely. And he’d proved
his ability to kill and go free.
But what about Andrew Vanderman’s death?
Because they’d have another case against him then. This time
it had been qualitative; the next time, the balance would shift
toward quantitative. If Sam Clay’s wife died, Sam Clay would
be investigated no matter how she died. Once a suspect, always
a suspect in the eyes of the law. The Eye of the law. They’d
check back. They’d return to this moment, while he sat here
revolving thoughts of death in his mind. And they’d return to
five minutes ago, and listen to him boast that he had killed
Vanderman.
A good lawyer might get him off. He could claim it wasn’t the
truth. He could say he had been goaded to an idle boast by the
things Bea said. He might get away with that, and he might not.
Scop would be the only proof, and he couldn’t be compelled to
take scop.
But—no. That wasn’t the answer. That wasn’t the way out.
He could tell by the sick, sinking feeling inside him. There had
been just one glorious moment of release, after he’d made his
72 Henry Kuttner
confession to Bea, and from then on everything seemed to run
downhill again.
But that moment had been the goal he’d worked toward all
this time. He didn’t know what it was, or why he wanted it. But
he recognized the feeling when it came. He wanted it back.
This helpless feeling, this impotence—was this the total sum
of what he had achieved? Then he’d failed, after all. Somehow,
in some strange way he could only partly understand, he had
failed; killing Vanderman hadn’t been the answer at all. He wasn’t
a success. He was a second-rater, a passive, helpless worm
whom Bea would manage and control and drive, eventually,
to—
“What’s the matter, Sam?’’ Bea asked solicitously.
“You think I’m a second-rater, don’t you?’’ he said. “You’ll
never believe I’m not. You think I couldn’t have killed Vanderman
except by accident. You’ll never believe I could possibly have
defied—’’
“What?*’ she asked, when he did not go on.
There was a new note of surprise in his voice.
“But it wasn’t defiance,’’ he said slowly. “I just hid and
dodged. Circumvented. I hung dark glasses on an Eye, because I
was afraid of it. But—that wasn’t defiance. So—what I really
was trying to prove—’’
She gave him a startled, incredulous stare as he stood up.
“Sam! What are you doing?’’ Her voice cracked a little.
“Proving something,’’ Clay said, smiling crookedly, and glanc¬
ing up from Bea to the ceiling. “Take a good look,’’ he said to
the Eye as he smashed her skull with the decanter.
MAMMA _
by Peter Phillips (1921— )
Astounding Science Fiction , February
British newspaperman Peter Phillips (not to be confused with
Rog Phillips, another good writer) returns—his incredible
' ‘Dreams are Sacred P* is a very tough act to follow—with this
fine story about other dimensions and religious beliefs. We
know far less about Peter Phillips than we should, except that
at his best he was very good indeed, and that like many (too
many) other writers he seems to have only had one solid
productive decade in his career, in this case 1948 to 1958. It
is interesting to speculate on what kind of sf he would be
writing if he began his career in 1978 instead of thirty years
earlier.—M.H.G.
(It seems to me that science fiction writers tend to avoid
religion. Surely, religion has permeated many societies at all
times; all Western societies from ancient Sumeria on have
had strong religious components. And yet—
Societies depicted in science fiction and fantasy often ig¬
nore religion. While the great Manichean battle of good
and evil—God and Satan—seems to permeate Tolkien's
* *Lord of the Rings ,'' there is no religious ritual anywhere
mentioned. In my own ‘ ‘ Foundation *' series, the only religious
element found is a purely secular fake—and that was put in
only at the insistence of John Campbell, to my own enormous
unease.
Still, there are exceptions. Religion does appear sometimes,
usually informs that appear [to me] to be somewhat Catholic
in atmosphere, or else Fundamentalist. “Manna” by Peter
Phillips is an example. — LA.)
* * *
73
74
Peter Phillips
Take best-quality synthetic protein. Bake it, break it up, steam
it, steep in in sucrose, ferment it, add nut oil, piquant spices
from the Indies, fruit juices, new flavors from the laboratory,
homogenize it, hydrolize it, soak it in brine; pump in glutamic
acid, balanced proportions of A, B t , B 2 , C, D, traces of calcium,
copper and iron salts, an unadvertised drop of benzedrine;
dehydrate, peptonize, irradiate, reheat in malt vapor under pres¬
sure compress, cut into mouth-sized chunks, pack in liquor from
an earlier stage of process—
Miracle Meal.
Everything the Body Needs to Sustain Life and Bounding
Vitality, in the Most DEEE LISHUSSS Food Ever Devised. It
will Invigorate You, Build Muscle, Brain, Nerve. Better than the
Banquets of Imperial Rome, Renaissance Italy, Eighteenth Cen¬
tury France—All in One Can. The Most Heavenly Taste Thrills
You Have Ever Experienced. Gourmets' Dream and Housewives'
Delight. You Can Live On It. Eat it for Breakfast, Lunch , Dinner.
You'll Never Get Tired of MIRACLE MEAL.
Ad cuts of Zeus contemptuously tossing a bowl of ambrosia
over the edge of Mount Olympus and making a goggle-eyed grab
for a can of Miracle Meal.
Studio fake-ups of Lucretia Borgia dropping a phial of poison
and crying piously: “It Would Be a Sin to Spoil Miracle Meal.”
Posters and night-signs of John Doe—or Bill Smith, or Henri
Brun, or Hans Schmitt or Wei Lung—balancing precariously on
a pyramided pile of empty M.M. cans, eyes closed, mouth
pursed in slighdy inane ecstasy as he finished the last mouthful
of his hundred-thousandth can.
You could live on it, certainly.
The publicity co-ordinator of the Miracle Meal Corporation
chose the victim himself—a young man named Arthur Adelaide
from Greenwich Village.
For a year, under the closest medical supervision and obser¬
vation, Arthur ate nothing but Miracle Meal.
From this Miracle Meal Marathon, as it was tagged by video¬
print newssheets, he emerged smiling, twice the weight—publicity
omitted to mention that he’d been half-starved to begin with—
he’d been trying to live off pure art and was a bad artist—
perfectly fit, and ten thousand dollars richer.
He was also given a commercial art job with M.M., designing
new labels for the cans.
His abrupt death at the end of an eighty-story drop from his
office window a week or two later received little attention.
MANNA
75
It would be unreasonable to blame the cumulative effect of
M.M., for Arthur was probably a little unbalanced to begin with,
whereas M.M. was Perfectly Balanced—a Kitchen in a Can.
Maybe you could get tired of it. But not very quickly. The
flavor was the secret. It was delicious yet strangely and tantalizingly
indefinable. It seemed to react progressively on the taste-buds so
that the tastes subtly changed with each mouthful.
One moment it might be omelette au fine herbes , the next,
turkey and cranberry, then buckwheat and maple. You’d be
through the can before you could make up your mind. So you’d
buy another.
Even the can was an improvement on the usual plastic self¬
heater—shape of a small, shallow pie-dish, with a pre-impressed
crystalline fracture in the plastic lid.
Press the inset button on the preheating unit at one side, and
when the food was good and hot, a secondary chemical reaction
in the unit released a fierce little plunger just inside the
perimeter fracture. Slight steam pressure finished the job. The
lip flipped off.
Come and get it. You eat right out of the can it comes in. Keep
your fingers out , Johnny. Don't you see the hygiplast spoon in
its moisture - and heat-repellent wrapper fixed under the lid?
The Rev. Malachi Pennyhorse did not eat Miracle Meal. Nor
was he impressed when Mr. Stephen Samson, Site Advisor to
the Corporation, spoke in large dollar signs of the indirect bene¬
fits a factory would bring to the district.
“Why here? You already have one factory in England. Why
not extend it?’’
“It’s our policy, Reverend—*’
“Not ‘Reverend’ young man. Call me Vicar. Or Mr. Penny-
horse. Or merely Pennyhorse— Go on.’’
“It’s our policy, sir, to keep our factories comparatively small,
site them in the countryside for the health of employees, and
modify the buildings to harmonize with the prevailing architecture
of the district. There is no interference with local amenities. All
transport of employees, raw materials, finished product is by
silent copter.’’
Samson laid a triphoto on the vicar’s desk. “What would you
say that was?’*
Mr. Pennyhorse adjusted his pince-nez, looked closely.
“Byzantine. Very fine. Around 500 a.d.’’
“And this—’’
“Moorish. Quite typical. Fifteenth century.’’
76
Peter Phillips
Samson said: “They’re our factories at Istanbul and Tunis
respectively. At Allahabad, India, we had to put up big notices
saying: ‘This is not a temple or place of worship’ because natives
kept wandering in and o£fering-up prayers to the processing
machines.’’
Mr. Pennyhorse glanced up quickly. Samson kept his face
straight, added: “The report may have been exaggerated, but—
you get the idea?’’
The vicar said: “I do. What shape do you intend your factory
to take in this village?’’
“That’s why I came to you. The rural district council sug¬
gested that you might advise us.’’
“My inclination, of course, is to advise you to go away and
not return.’’
The vig{£ looked out of his study window at the sleepy,
sun-washeoTTllage street, gables of the ancient Com Exchange,
paved market-place, lichened spire of his own time-kissed church;
and, beyond, rolling Wiltshire pastures cradling the peaceful
community.
The vicar sighed: “We’ve held out here so long—I hoped we
would remain inviolate in my time, at least. However, I suppose
we must consider ourselves fortunate that your corporation has
some respect for tradition and the feelings of the . . . uh . . .
‘natives.’ ’’
He pulled out a drawer in his desk. “It might help you to
understand those feelings if I show you a passage from the very
full diary of my predecessor here, who died fifty years ago at the
age of ninety-five—we’re a long-lived tribe, we clergy. It’s an
entry he made one hundred years ago—sitting at this very desk.*’
Stephen Samson took the opened volume.
The century-old handwriting was as readable as typescript.
“A/ay 3, 1943. Long, interesting discussion with young Ameri¬
can soldier, one of those who are billeted in the village. They
term themselves G.I.'s. Told me countryside near his home in
Pennsylvania not unlike our Wiltshire downs. Showed him round
church. Said he was leaving soon, and added: 7 love this place.
Nothing like my home town in looks, but the atmosphere’s the
same — old, and kind of comfortable. And 1 guess if 1 came back
here a hundred years from now, it wouldn’t have changed one
bit.’ An engaging young man. I trust he is right.”
Samson looked up. Mr. Pennyhorse said: “That young man
may have been one of your ancestors.’’
Samson gently replaced the old diary on the desk. “He wasn’t.
MANNA
77
My family’s Ohioan. But I see what you mean, and respect it.
That’s why I want you to help us. You will?”
“Do you fish?” asked the vicar, suddenly and irrelevantly.
“Yes, sir. Very fond of the sport.”
“Thought so. You’re the type. That’s why I like you. Take a
look at these flies. Seen anything like them? Make ’em myself.
One of the finest trout streams in the country just outside the
village. Help you? Of course I will.”
“Presumption,” said Brother James. He eased himself through
a gray stone wall by twisting his subexistential plane slightly, and
leaned reflectively against a moonbeam that slanted through the
branches of an oak.
A second habited and cowled figure materialized beside him.
“Perhaps so. But it does my age-wearied heart a strange good to
see those familiar walls again casting their shad ows, over the
field.” ^
“A mockery, Brother Gregory. A mere shell that simulates
the outlines of our beloved Priory. Think you that even the
stones are of that good, gray granite that we built with? Nay! As
this cursed simulacrum was a-building, I warped two hands into
the solid, laid hold of a mossy block, and by the saints, ’twas of
such inconsequential weight I might have hurled it skyward with
a finger. And within, is there aught which we may recognize?
No chapel, no cloisters, no refectory—only long, geometrical
rooms. And what devilries and unholy rites may not be centered
about those strange mechanisms, with which the rooms are
filled?”
At the tirade. Brother Gregory sighed and thrust back his cowl
to let the gracious moonbeams play on his tonsured head. “For
an Untranslated One of some thousand years’ standing,” he said,
“you exhibit a mulish ignorance. Brother James. You would
deny men all advancement. I remember well your curses when
first we saw horseless carriages and flying machines.”
“Idols!” James snapped. “Men worship them. Therefore are
they evil.”
“You are so good, Brother James,” Gregory said, with the
heaviest sarcasm. “So good, it is my constant wonderment that
you have had to wait so long for Translation Upwards. Do you
think that Dom Penny horse, the present incumbent of Selcor—a
worthy man, with reverence for the past—would permit evil rites
within his parish? You are a befuddled old anachronism, brother.”
“That,” said James, “is quite beyond sufferance. For you to
speak thus of Translation, when it was your own self-indulgent
78 Peter Phillips
pursuit of carnal pleasures that caused us to be bound here
through the centuries!”
Brother Gregory said coldly: “It was not I who inveigled the
daughter of Ronald the Wry-Neck into the kitchen garden, thus
exposing the weak flesh of a brother to grievous temptation.”
There was silence for a while, save for the whisper of a
midnight breeze through the branches of the oak, and the muted
call of a nightbird from the far woods.
Gregory extended a tentative hand and lightly touched the
sleeve of James’s habit. “The argument might proceed for yet
another century and bring us no nearer Translation. Besides it is
not such unbearable penance, my brother. Were we not both
lovers of the earth, of this fair countryside?”
James shrugged. Another silence. Then he fingered his gaunt
white che fW “What we do. Brother Gregory? Shall we—appear
to them? >r ~
Gregory said: “I doubt whether common warp manifestation
would be efficacious. As dusk fell tonight, I overheard a conver¬
sation between Dom Penny horse and a tall, young-featured man
who has been concerned in the building of this simulacrum. The
latter spoke in one of the dialects of the Americas; and it was
mentioned that several of the men who will superintend the
working of the machines within will also be from the United
States—for a time at least. It is not prudent to haunt Americans
in the normal fashion. Their attitude towards such matters is
notoriously—unseemly. ’ ’
“We could polter,” suggested Brother James.
Gregory replaced his cowl. “Let us review the possibilities,
then,” he said, “remembering that our subetheric energy is
limited.”
They walked slowly together over the meadow towards the
resuscitated gray walls of the Selcor Prior. Blades of grass,
positively charged by their passage, sprang suddenly upright,
relaxed slowly into limpness as the charge leaked away.
They halted at the walls to adjust their planes of incidence and
degree of tenuity, and passed inside.
The new Miracle Meal machines had had their first test run.
The bearings on the dehydrator pumps were still warm as two
black figures, who seemed to carry with them an air of vast and
wistful loneliness, paced silently between rows of upright cylinders
which shone dully in moonlight diffused through narrow windows.
“Here,” said Gregory, the taller of the two, softly, “did we
once walk the cloisters in evening meditation.”
MANNA
79
Brother James’s broad features showed signs of unease. He
felt more than mere nostalgia.
“Power—what are they using? Something upsets my bones. I
am queasy, as when a thunderstom is about to break. Yet there is
no static.”
Gregory stopped, looked at his hand. There was a faint blue
aura at his fingertips. “Slight neutron escape,” he said. “They
have a small thorium-into-233 pile somewhere. It needs better
shielding.”
“You speak riddles.”
Gregory said, with a little impatience: “You have the entire
science section of the village library at your disposal at nightfall
for the effort of a trifling polter, yet for centuries you have read
nothing but the Lives of the Saints. So, of course, I speak
riddles—to you. You are even content to remain in ignorance of
the basic principles of your own structure and functioning, doing
everything by traditional thought-rote and rule of thumb. But I
am not so content; and of my knowledge, I can assure you that
the radiation will not harm you unless you warp to solid and sit
atop the pile when it is in full operation.” Gregory smiled.
“And then, dear brother, you would doubtless be so uncomfort¬
able that you would dewarp before any harm could be done
beyond the loss of a little energy that would be replaced in time.
Let us proceed.”
They went through three departments before Brother Gregory
divined the integrated purpose of the vats, driers, conveyor-tubes,
belts and containers.
“The end product. I’m sure, is a food of sorts,” he said, “and
by some quirk of fate, it is stored in approximately the position
that was once occupied by our kitchen store—if my sense of
orientation has not been bemused by these strange internal
surroundings.”
The test run of the assembly had produced a few score cans of
Miracle Food. They were stacked on metal shelves which would
tilt and gravity-feed them into the shaft leading up to the crating
machine. Crated, they would go from there to the copter-loading
bay on the roof.
Brother James reached out to pick up a loose can. His hand
went through it twice.
“Polt, you dolt!” said Brother Gregory. “Or are you trying to
be miserly with your confounded energy? Here, let me do it.”
The telekineticized can sprang into his solid hands. He turned
it about slightly increasing his infrared receptivity to read the
label, since the storeroom was in darkness.
80
Peter Phillips
‘ ‘ Miracle Meal. Press here. ”
He pressed, pressed again, and was closely examining the can
when, after thirty seconds, the lid flipped off, narrowly missing
his chin.
Bom, and living, in more enlightened times, Brother Gregory’s
inquiring mind and insatiable appetite for facts would have made
him a research worker. He did not drop the can. His hands were
quite steady. He chuckled. He said: “Ingenious, very ingenious.
See—the food is hot.’’
He warped his nose and back-palate into solid and delicately
inhaled vapors. His eyes widened. He frowned, inhaled again.
A beatific smile spread over his thin face.
“Brother James—warp your nose!’’
The injunction, in other circumstances, might have been con¬
sidered both impolite and unnecessary. Brother James was no
beauty, and his big, blunt, snoutlike nose, which had been a
flaring red in life, was the least prepossessing of his features.
But he warped it, and sniffed.
M.M. Sales Leaflet Number 14: It Will Sell By Its Smell
Alone.
Gregory said hesitantly: “Do you think Brother James, that
we might—’’
James licked his lips, from side to side, slowly. “It would
surely take a day’s accumulation of energy to hold digestive and
alimentary in solid for a sufficient period. But—’’
“Don’t be a miser,’’ said Gregory. “There’s a spoon beneath
the lid. Get a can for yourself. And don’t bother with digestive.
Teeth, palate and throat are sufficient. It would not digest in any
case. It remains virtually unchanged. But going down—ah, bliss!”
It went down. Two cans.
“Do you remember, brother,’* said James, in a weak, remi¬
niscing voice, “what joy it was to eat and be strengthened. And
now to eat is to be weakened.”
Brother Gregory’s voice was faint but happy. “Had there been
food of this character available before our First Translation, I
doubt whether other desires of the flesh would have appealed to
me. But what was our daily fare set on the refectory table:
peas; lentils; cabbage soup; hard, tasteless cheese. Year after
year— ugh!"
“Health-giving foods,’’ murmured Brother James, striving to be
righteous even in his exhaustion. “Remember when we bribed
the kitchener to get extra portions. Good trenchermen, we. Had
MANNA
81
we not died of the plague before our Priory became rich and
powerful, then, by the Faith, our present bodies would be of
greater girth.”
“Forms, not bodies,” said Gregory, insisting even in his
exhaustion on scientific exactitudes. “Variable fields, consisting
of open lattices of energy foci resolvable into charged particles—
and thus solid matter—when they absorb energy beyond a certain
stage. In other words, my dear ignorant brother, when we polt.
The foci themselves—or rather the spaces between them—act as
a limited-capacity storage battery for the slow accretion of this
energy from cosmic sources, which may be controlled and con¬
centrated in the foci by certain thought-patterns.”
Talking was an increasing effort in his energy-low state.
“When we polt,” he went on slowly, “we take up heat, air
cools, live people get cold shivers; de-polt, give up heat, live
people get clammy, cold-hot feeling; set up ’lectrostatic field,
live peoples’ hair stan’s on end”—his voice was trailing into
deep, blurred inaudibility, like a mechanical phonograph running
down, but James wasn’t listening anyway—“an’ then when we
get Translated Up’ards by The Power That Is, all the energy goes
back where it came from an’ we jus’ become thought. Thassall.
Thought. Thought, thought, thought, thought—”
The phonograph ran down, stopped. There was silence in the
transit storeroom of the Selcor Priory Factory branch of the
Miracle Meal Corporation.
For a while.
Then—
“THOUGHT!”
The shout brought Brother James from his uneasy, uncon¬
trolled repose at the nadir of an energy balance.
“What is it?” he grumbled. “I’m too weak to listen to any of
your theorizing.”
“Theorizing! I have it!”
“Conserve your energies, brother, else will you be too weak
even to twist yourself from this place.”
Both monks had permitted their forms to relax into a comer of
the storeroom, supine, replete in disrepletion.
Brother Gregory sat up with an effort.
“Listen, you attenuated conserve of very nothingness, I have
a way to thwart, bemuse, mystify and irritate these crass
philistine^—and nothing so simple that a psychic investigator
could put a thumb on us. What are we, Brother James?”
It was a rhetorical question, and Brother James had barely
formulated his brief repy—“Ghosts”—before Brother Gregory,
82
Peter Phillips
energized in a way beyond his own understanding by his own
enthusiasm, went on: “Fields, in effect. Mere lines of force, in
our un-polted state. What happens if we whirl? A star whirls. It has
mass, rate of angular rotation, degree of compactness—therefore,
gravity. Why? Because it has a field to start with. But we are our
own fields. We need neither mass nor an excessive rate of
rotation to achieve the same effect. Last week I grounded a
high-flying wood-pigeon by whirling. It shot down to me through
the air, and I’d have been buffeted by its pinions had I not stood
aside. It hit the ground—not too heavily, by the grace of St.
Barbara—recovered and flew away.”
The great nose of Brother James glowed pinkly for a moment.
“You fuddle and further weaken me by your prating. Get to your
point, if you have such. And explain how we may do anything in
our present unenergized state, beyond removing ourselves to a
nexus point for recuperation.”
Brother Gregory warped his own nose into solid in order to
scratch its tip. He felt the need of this reversion to a life habit,
which had once aided him in marshaling his thoughts.
“You think only of personal energy,” he said scornfully.
“We do need that, to whirl. It is an accumulative process, yet
we gain nothing, lose nothing. Matter is not the only thing we
can warp. If you will only listen, you woof of unregenerate and
forgotten flesh, I will try to explain without mathematics.”
He talked.
After a while. Brother James’s puzzled frown gave way to a faint
smile. “Perhaps I understand,” he said.
“Then forgive me for implying you were a moron,” said
Gregory. “Stand up, Brother James.”
Calls on transatlantic tight-beam cost heavy. Anson Dewberry,
Miracle Meal Overseas Division head, pointed this out to Mr.
Stephen Samson three times during their conversation.
“Listen,” said Samson at last, desperately, “I’ll take no more
delegation of authority. In my contract, it says I’m site adviser.
That means I’m architect and negotiator, not detective or scien¬
tist or occulist. I offered to stay on here to supervise building
because I happen to like the place. I like the pubs. I like the
people. I like the fishing. But it wasn’t in my contract. And I’m
now standing on that contract. Building is finished to schedule,
plant installed—your tech men, incidentally, jetted out of here
without waiting to catch snags after the first runoff—and now
I’m through. The machines are running, the cans are coming
off—and if the copters don’t collect, that’s for you and the
MANNA
83
London office to bat your brains out over. And the Lord forgive
that mess of terminal propositions,” he added in lower voice.
Samson was a purist in the matter of grammar.
Anson Dewberry jerked his chair nearer the scanner in his
New York office. His pink, round face loomed in Samson’s
screen like that of an avenging cherub.
“Don’t you have no gendarmes around that place?” Mr.
Dewberry was no purist, in moments of stress. “Get guards on,
hire some militia, check employees. Ten thousand cans of M.M.
don’t just evaporate.”
“They do,” Samson replied sadly. “Maybe it’s the climate.
And for the seventh time, I tell you I’ve done all that. I’ve had
men packed so tightly around the place that even an orphan
neutron couldn’t get by. This morning I had two men from
Scotland Yard gumming around. They looked at the machines,
followed the assembly through to the transit storeroom, exam¬
ined the electrolocks and mauled their toe-caps trying to boot a
dent in the door. Then the top one—that is, the one who only
looked half-asleep—said, ‘Mr. Samson, sir, do you think it’s
. . . uh . . . possible . . . that. . . uh . . . this machine of yours
. . . uh . . . goes into reverse when your . . . uh . . . backs are
turned and . . . uh . . . sucks the cans back again?’ ”
Grating noises that might have been an incipient death rattle
slid over the tight-beam from New York.
Samson nodded, a smirk of mock sympathy on his tanned,
humor-wrinkled young face.
The noises ended with a gulp. The image of Dewberry thrust
up a hesitant forefinger in interrogation. “Hey! Maybe there’s
something to that, at that—would it be possible?”
Samson groaned a little. “I wouldn’t really know or overmuch
care. But I have doubts. Meantime—”
“Right.” Dewberry receded on the screen. “I’ll jet a man
over tonight. The best. From Research. Full powers. Hand over
to him. Take some of your vacation. Design some more blamed
mosques or tabernacles. Go fishing.”
“A sensible suggestion,” Samson said. “Just what I was
about to do. It’s a glorious afternoon here, sun a little misted,
grass green, stream flowing cool and deep, fish lazing in the
pools where the willow-shadows fall—”
The screen blanked. Dewberry was no purist, and no poet
either.
Samson made a schoolkid face. He switched off the fluor
lamps that supplemented the illumination from a narrow window
in the supervisor’s office—which, after studying the ground-plan
84
Peter Phillips
of the original Selcor Priory, he had sited in the space that was
occupied centuries before by the business sanctum of the Prior—
got up from his desk and walked through a Norman archway into
the sunlight.
He breathed the meadow-sweet air deeply, with appreciation.
The Rev. Malachi Pennyhorse was squatting with loose-jointed
ease against the wall. Two fishing rods in brown canvas covers
lay across his lap. He was studying one of the trout-flies nicked
into the band of his ancient hat. His balding, brown pate was
bared to the sun. He looked up.
“What fortune, my dear Stephen?”
“I convinced him at last. He’s jetting a man over tonight. He
told me to go fishing.”
“Injunction unnecessary, I should imagine. Let’s go. We
shan’t touch a trout with the sky as clear as this, but I have some
float tackle for lazier sport.” They set off across a field. “Are
you running the plant today?”
Samson nodded his head towards a faint hum. “Quarter-
speed. That will give one copter-load for the seventeen hundred
hours collection, and leave enough over to go in the transit store
for the night and provide Dewberry’s man with some data. Or
rather, lack of it.”
“Where do you think it’s going?”
“I’ve given up guessing.”
Mr. Pennyhorse paused astride a stile and looked back at the
gray bulk of the Priory. “I could guess who’s responsible,” he
said, and chuckled.
“Uh? Who?”
Mr. Pennyhorse shook his head. “Leave that to your invest¬
igator. ’ ’
A few moments later he murmured as if to himself: “What a
haunt! Ingenious devils.”
But when Stephen Samson looked at him inquiringly, he
added: “But I can’t guess where your cans have been put.”
And he would say nothing more on the subject.
Who would deny that the pure of heart are often simple-
minded? (The obverse of the proposition need not be argued.)
And that cause-effect relations are sometimes divined more read¬
ily by the intuition of simpletons than the logic of scholars?
Brother Simon Simplex—Simple Simon to later legends—looked
open-mouthed at the array of strange objects on the stone shelves
of the kitchen storeroom. He was not surprised—his mouth was
always open, even in sleep.
MANNA
85
He took down one of the objects and examined it with mild
curiosity. He shook it, turned it round, thrust a forefinger into a
small depression. Something gave slightly, but there was no
other aperture. He replaced it on the shelf.
When his fellow-kitchener returned, he would ask him the
purpose of the objects—if he could remember to do so. Simon’s
memory was poor. Each time the rota brought him onto kitchen
duty for a week, he had to be instructed afresh in the business of
serving meals in the refectory: platter so, napkin thus, spoon
here, finger bowls half-filled, three water pitchers, one before
the Prior, one in the center, one at the foot of the table—“and
when you serve, tread softly and do not breathe down the necks
of the brothers.”
Even now could he hear the slight scrape of benches on stone
as the monks, with bowed heads, freshly washed hands in the
sleeves of their habits, filed slowly into the refectory and took
their seats at the long, oak table. And still his fellow-kitchener
had not returned from the errand. Food was prepared—dared he
begin to serve alone?
It was a great problem for Simon, brother in the small House
of Selcor, otherwise Selcor Priory, poor cell-relation to the rich
monastery of the Cluniac Order at Battle, in the year 1139 a.d.
Steam pressure in the triggered can of Miracle Meal did its
work. The lid flipped. The aroma issued.
Simon’s mouth nearly shut as he sniffed.
The calm and unquestioning acceptance of the impossible is
another concommitant of simplicity and purity of heart. To the
good and simple Simon the rising of the sun each morning and
the singing of birds were recurrent miracles. Compared with
these, a laboratory miracle of the year 2143 a.d. was as nothing.
Here was a new style of platter, filled with hot food, ready to
serve. Wiser minds than his had undoubtedly arranged matters.
His fellow-kitchener, knowing the task was thus simplified, had
left him to serve alone.
He had merely to remove the covers from these platters and
carry them into the refectory. To remove the covers—cause—
effect—the intuition of a simple mind.
Simon carried fourteen of the platters to the kitchen table,
pressed buttons and waited.
He was gravely tempted to sample the food himself, but
all-inclusive Benedictine rules forbade kitcheners to eat until
their brothers had been served.
He carried a loaded tray into the refectory where the monks sat
86
Peter Phillips
in patient silence except for the one voice of the Reader who
stood at a raised lectern and intoned from the Lives of the Saints.
Pride that he had been thought fit to carry out the duty alone
made Simon less clumsy than usual. He served the Prior, Dom
Holland, first, almost deftly; then the other brothers, in two trips
to the kitchen.
A spicy, rich, titillating fragrance filled the refectory. The
intoning of the Lives of the Saints faltered for a moment as the
mouth of the Reader filled with saliva, then he grimly continued.
At Dom Holland's signal, the monks ate.
The Prior spooned the last drops of gravy into his mouth. He
sat back. A murmur arose. He raised a hand. The monks became
quiet. The Reader closed his book.
Dom Holland was a man of faith; but he did not accept
miracles or even the smallest departures from routine existence
without questioning. He had sternly debated with himself whether
he should question the new platters and the new food before or
after eating. The aroma decided him. He ate first.
Now he got up, beckoned to a senior monk to follow him, and
paced with unhurried calmness to the kitchen.
Simon had succumbed. He was halfway through his second
tin.
He stood up, licking his fingers.
“Whence comes this food, my son?” asked Dom Holland, in
sonorous Latin.
Simon’s mouth opened wider. His knowledge of the tongue
was confined to prayers.
Impatiently the Prior repeated the question in the English
dialect of the district.
Simon pointed, and led them to the storeroom.
“I looked, and it was here,” he said simply. The words were
to become famed.
His fellow-kitchener was sought—he was found dozing in a
warm comer of the kitchen garden—and questioned. He shook
his head. The provisioner rather reluctantly disclaimed credit.
Dom Holland thought deeply, then gave instructions for a
general assembly. The plastic “platters” and the hygiplast spoons
were carefully examined. There were murmurs of wonderment at
the workmanship. The discussion lasted two hours.
Simon’s only contribution was to repeat with pathetic insistence:
“I looked and it was there.”
He realized dimly that he had become a person of some
importance.
MANNA
87
His face became a mask of puzzlement when the Prior summed
up:
“Our simple but blessed brother, Simon Simplex, it seems to
me, has become an instrument or vessel of some thaumaturgical
manifestation. It would be wise, however, to await further dem¬
onstration before the matter is referred to higher authorities.”
The storeroom was sealed and two monks were deputed as
nightguards.
Even with the possibility of a miracle on his hands, Dom
Holland was not prepared to abrogate the Benedictine rule of
only one main meal a day. The storeroom wasn't opened until
early afternoon of the following day.
It was opened by Simon, in the presence of the Prior, a scribe,
the provisioned and two senior monks.
Released, a pile of Miracle Meal cans toppled forward like a
crumbling cliff, slithering and clattering in noisy profusion around
Simon’s legs, sliding over the floor of the kitchen.
Simon didn’t move. He was either too surprised or cunningly
aware of the effectiveness of the scene. He stood calf-deep in
cans, pointed at the jumbled stack inside the storeroom, sloping
up nearly to the stone roof, and said his little piece:
“I look, and it is here.”
“Kneel, my sons,” said Dom Holland gravely, and knelt.
Manna.
And at a time when the Priory was hard-pressed to maintain
even its own low standard of subsistence, without helping the
scores of dispossessed refugees encamped in wattle shacks near
its protecting walls.
The countryside was scourged by a combination of civil and
foreign war. Stephen of Normandy against Matilda of Anjou for
the British throne. Neither could control his own followers.
When the Flemish mercenaries of King Stephen were not chasing
Queen Matilda’s Angevins back over the borders of Wiltshire,
they were plundering the lands and possessions of nominal sup¬
porters of Stephen. The Angevins and the barons who supported
Matilda’s cause quite impartially did the same, then pillaged
each other's property, castle against castle, baron against baron.
It was anarchy and free-for-all—but nothing for the ignored
serfs, bondmen, villeins and general peasantry, who fled from
stricken homes and roamed the countryside in bands of starving
thousands. Some built shacks in the inviolate shadow of churches
and monasteries.
Selcor Priory had its quota of barefoot, raggedly men, women
and children—twelfth century Displaced Persons.
88
Peter Phillips
They were a headache to the Prior, kindly Dom Holland—
until Simple Simon’s Miracle.
There were seventy recipients of the first hand-out of Miracle
Meal cans from the small door in the Priory’s walled kitchen
garden.
The next day there were three hundred, and the day after that,
four thousand. Good news doesn’t need radio to get around fast.
Fourteen monks worked eight-hour shifts for twenty-four hours,
hauling stocks from the capacious storeroom, pressing buttons,
handing out steaming platters to orderly lines of refugees.
Two monks, shifting the last few cans from the store, were
suddenly buried almost to their necks by the arrival of a fresh
consignment, which piled up out of thin air.
Providence, it seemed, did nqt depend solely upon the interven¬
tion of Simon Simplex. The Priory itself and all its inhabitants
were evidently blessed.
The Abbot of Battle, Dom Holland’s superior, a man of great
girth and great learning visited the Priory. He confirmed the
miracle—by studying the label on the can.
After several hours’ work in the Prior’s office, he announced
to Dom Holland:
“The script presented the greatest difficulty. It is an extreme
simplification of letter-forms at present in use by Anglo-Saxon
scholars. The pertinent text is a corruption—if I may be par¬
doned the use of such a term in the circumstances—of the Latin
4 miraculwn ’ compounded with the word ‘mael' from our own
barbarous tongue—so, clearly, Miracle Meal!’’
Dom Holland murmured his awe of this learning.
The Abbot added, half to himself: “Although why the nature
of the manifestation should be thus advertised in repetitive
engraving, when it is self-evident—” He shrugged. “The ways
of Providence are passing strange.’’
Brother Gregory, reclining in the starlight near his favorite
oak, said:
“My only regret is that we cannot see the effect of our
gift—the theoretical impact of a modem product—usually a
weapon—on past ages is a well-tried topic of discussion and
speculation among historians, scientists, economists and writers
of fantasy.’’
Brother James, hunched in vague adumbration on a wall behind,
said: “You are none of those things, else might you explain why
it is that, if these cans have reached the period for which,
according to your obtruse calculations, they were destined—an
MANNA 89
age in which we were both alive—we cannot remember such an
event, or why it is not recorded in histories of the period.”
“It was a time of anarchy, dear brother. Many records were
destroyed. And as for your memories—well, great paradoxes of
time are involved. One might as profitably ask how many angels
may dance on the point of a pin. Now if you should wish to
know how many atoms might be accommodated in a like
position—”
Brother Gregory was adroit at changing the subject. He didn’t
wish to speculate aloud until he’d figured out all the paradox
possibilities. He’d already discarded an infinity of time-streams
as intellectually unsatisfying, and was toying with the concept of
recurrent worlds—
“Dom Pennyhorse has guessed that it is our doing.”
“What’s that?’’
Brother James repeated the information smugly.
Gregory said slowly: “Well, he is not—unsympathetic—to
us.”
“Assuredly, brother, we have naught to fear from him, nor
from the pleasant young man with whom he goes fishing. But
this young man was today in consultation with his superior, and
an investigator is being sent from America.”
“Psychic investigator, eh? Phooey. We’ll tie him in knots,”
and Gregory complacently.
44 I assume,” said Brother James, with a touch of self-
righteousness, “that these vulgar colloquialisms to which you
sometimes have recourse are another result of your nocturnal
reading. They offend my ear. ‘Phooey,* indeed—No, this investi¬
gator is one with whom you will undoubtedly find an affinity. I
gather that he is from a laboratory—a scientist of sorts.”
Brother Gregory sat up and rubbed his tonsure thoughtfully.
“That,” he admitted, “is different.” There was a curious mix¬
ture of alarm and eagerness in his voice. “There are means of
detecting the field we employ.”
An elementary electroscope was one of the means. An ioniza¬
tion indicator and a thermometer were others. They were all
bolted firmly on a bench just inside the storeroom. Wires led
from them under the door to a jury-rigged panel outside.
Sandy-haired Sidney Meredith of M.M. Research sat in front
of the panel on a folding stool, watching dials with intense blue
eyes, chin propped in hands.
Guards had been cleared from the factory. He was alone, on
the advice of Mr. Pennyhorse, who had told him: “If, as I
suspect, it’s the work of two of my . . . uh . . . flock . . . two
90
Peter Phillips
very ancient parishioners . . . they are more likely to play theii
tricks in the absence of a crowd.”
“I get it,” Meredith had said. “Should be interesting.”
It was.
He poured coffee from a thermos without taking his eyes from
the panel. The thermometer reading was dropping slowly. Ioniza¬
tion was rising. From inside the store came the faint rasp of
moving objects.
Meredith smiled, sighted a thumb-size camera, recorded the
panel readings. “This,” he said softly, “will make a top feature
in the Journal : 'The most intensive psychic and poltergeist phe¬
nomena ever recorded. M.M.’s top tech trouble-shooter spikes
spooks.’ ”
There was a faint snap beyond the door. Dials swooped back
to Zero. Meredith quit smiling and daydreaming.
“Hey—play fair!” he called.
The whisper of a laugh answered him, and a soft, hollow
whine, as of a wind cycloning into outer space.
He grabbed the door, pulled. It resisted. It was like trying to
break a vacuum. He knelt, lit a cigarette, held it near the bottom
of the nearly flush-fitting door. A thin streamer of smoke curled
down and was drawn swiftly through the barely perceptible
crack.
The soft whine continued for a few seconds, began to die
away.
Meredith yanked at the door again. It gave, to a slight ingush
of air. He thrust his foot in the opening, said calmly into the
empty blackness: “When you fellers have quite finished—I’m
coming in. Don’t go away. Let’s talk.”
He slipped inside, closkl the door, stood silent for a moment.
He sniffed. Ozone. His scalp prickled. He scratched his head,
felt the hairs standing upright. And it was cold.
He said: “Right. No point in playing dumb or covering-up,
boys.” He felt curiously ashamed of the platitudes as he uttered
them. “I must apologize for breaking in,” he added—and meant
it. “But this has got to finish. And if you’re not willing to—co¬
operate—I think I know now how to finish it.”
Another whisper of a laugh. And two words, faint, gently
mocking: “Do you?”
Meredith strained his eyes against the darkness. He saw only
the nerve-patterns in his own eyes. He shrugged.
“If you won’t play—” He switched on a blaze of fluor lamps.
The long steel shelves were empty. There was only one can of
Miracle Meal left in the store.
MANNA
91
He felt it before he saw it. It dropped on his head, clattered to
the plastocrete floor. When he’d retrieved his breath, he kicked it
savagely to the far end of the store and turned to his instruments.
The main input lead had been pulled away. The terminal had
been loosened first.
He unclamped a wide-angle infrared camera, waited impa¬
tiently for the developrinter to act, pulled out the print.
And laughed. It wasn’t a good line-caricature of himself, but it
was recognizable, chiefly by the shock of unruly hair.
The lines were slightly blurred, as though written by a needle¬
point of light directly on the film. There was a jumble of writing
over and under it.
“Old English, I suppose,’’ he murmured. He looked closer.
The writing above the caricature was a de Sitter version of the
Reimann-Christoffel tensor, followed in crabbed but readable
modem English by the words: “Why reverse the sign? Do we act
like anti-particles?’’
Underneath the drawing was an energy tensor and a comment:
“You will notice that magnetic momenta contribute a negative
density and pressure.’’
A string of symbols followed, ending with an equals sign and
a query mark. And another comment: “You’ll need to take time
out to balance this one.’’
Meredith read the symbols, then sat down heavily on the edge
of the instrument bench and groaned. Time out. But Time was
already out, and there was neither matter nor radiation in a de
Sitter universe.
Unless—
He pulled out a notebook, started to scribble.
An hour later Mr. Pennyhorse and Stephen Samson came in.
Mr. Pennyhorse said: “My dear young fellow, we were quite
concerned. We thought—’’
He stopped. Meredith’s blue eyes were slightly out of focus.
There were beads of sweat on his brow despite the coolness of
the storeroom. Leaves from his notebook and cigarette stubs
littered the floor around his feet.
He jumped like a pricked frog when the vicar gently tapped
his shoulder, and uttered a vehement cuss-word that startled even
the broad-minded cleric.
Samson tuttqj.
Meredith muttered: “Sorry, sir. But I think I nearly had it.’’
“What, my son?’’
Meredith looked like a ruffle-haired schoolboy. His eyes came
back into focus. “A crossword puzzle clue,’’ he said. “Set by a
92
Peter Phillips
spook with a super-I.Q. Two quite irreconcilable systems of
mathematics lumped together, the signs in an extended energy
tensor reversed, merry hell played with a temporal factor—and
yet it was beginning to make sense.”
He smiled wryly. “A ghost who unscrews terminals before he
breaks connections and who can make my brain boil is a ghost
worth meeting.”
Mr. Pennyhorse eased his pince-nez. “Uh . . . yes. Now,
don’t you think it’s time you came to bed? It’s four a m. My
housekeeper has made up a comfortable place on the divan in the
sitting room.” He took Meredith’s arm and steered him from the
store.
As they walked across the dewy meadows towards the vicarage,
with the first pale streaks of dawn showing in the sky, Samson
said: “How about the cans?”
“Time,” replied Meredith vaguely, “will tell.”
“And the guards?”
“Pay them off. Send them away. Keep the plant rolling. Fill
the transit store tonight. And I want a freighter copter to take me
to London University this afternoon.”
Back in the transit store, the discarded leaves from Meredith’s
notebook fluttered gently upwards in the still air and disappeared.
Brother James said: “He is alone again.”
They looked down on the sandy head of Sidney Meredith from
the vantage point of a dehydrating tower.
“So I perceive. And I fear this may be our last uh . . .
consignment to our erstwhile brothers,” said Gregory thoughtfully.
“Why?”
“You will see. In giving him the clue to what we were doing,
I gave him the clue to what we are, essentially.”
They drifted down towards the transit store.
“After you, Brother James,” said Brother Gregory with exces¬
sive politeness.
James adjusted his plane of incidence, started through the
wall, and—
Shot backwards with a voiceless scream of agony.
Brother Gregory laughed. “I’m sorry. But that’s why it will
be our last consignment. Heterodyning is painful. He is a very
intelligent fellow. The next time, he will take care to screen both
his ultra-short generator and controls so that I cannot touch
them.”
Brother James recovered. “You . . . you use me as a con-
MANNA
93
founded guinea pig! By the saints, you appear to have more
sympathy with the man than with me!”
“Not more sympathy, my beloved brother, but certainly much
more in common,” Brother Gregory replied frankly. “Wait.”
He drifted behind Meredith’s back and poltered the tip of one
finger to flick a lightly soldered wire from a terminal behind a
switch. Meredith felt his scalp tingle. A pilot light on his panel
blinked out.
Meredith got up from his stool, stretched lazily, grinned into
the empty air. He said aloud: “Right. Help yourselves. But I
warn you—once you’re in, you don’t come out until you agree to
talk. I have a duplicate set and a built-in circuit-tester. The only
way you can spike them is by busting tubes. And I’ve a hunch
you wouldn’t do that.”
“No,” James muttered. “You wouldn’t. Let us go.”
“No,” Gregory answered. “Inside quickly—and whirl. After¬
wards I shall speak with him. He is a youth of acute sensibilities
and gentleness, whose word is his bond.”
Gregory urged his fellow-monk to the wall. They passed
within.
Meredith heard nothing, until a faint whine began in the store.
He waited until it died away, then knocked on the door. It
seemed, crazily, the correct thing to do.
He went into the darkness. “You there?”
A low and pleasant voice, directionless: “Yes. Why didn’t
you switch on your duplicate generator?”
Meredith breathed deep. “I didn’t think it would be necessary.
I feel we understand each other. My name is Sidney Meredith.”
“Mine is Gregory of Ramsbury.”
“And your—friend?”
“James Brasenose. I may say that he disapproves highly of
this conversation.”
“I can understand that. It is unusual. But then, you’re a very
unusual . . . um—”
“ ‘Ghost’ is the common term, Mr. Meredith. Rather inade¬
quate, I think, for supranormal phenomena which are, nevertheless,
subject to known laws. Most Untranslated spirits remain quite
ignorant of their own powers before final Translation. It was
only by intensive reading and thought that I determined the
principles and potentialities of my construction.”
“Anti-particles?”
“According to de Sitter,” said Brother Gregory, “that is what
we should be. But we are not mere mathematical experessions. I
prefer the term ‘energy foci.’ From a perusal of the notes you
94
Peter Phillips
left behind yesterday morning—and, of course, from your use of
ultra-short waves tonight—it seems you struck the correct train
of deduction immediately. Incidentally, where did you obtain the
apparatus at such short notice?”
“London University.”
Brother Gregory sighed. “I should like to visit their laboratories.
But we are bound to this area by a form of moral compulsion
that I cannot define or overcome. Only vicariously, through the
achievements of others, may I experience the thrill of research.”
“You don’t do so badly,” Meredith said. He was mildly
surprised that he felt quite so sane and at ease, except for the
daricness. “Would you mind if we had a light?”
“I must be semipolted—or warped—to speak with you. It’s
not a pleasant sight—floating lungs, larynx, palate, tongue and
lips. I’d feel uncomfortable for you. We might appear for you
later, if you wish.”
“Right. But keep talking. Give me the how and the why. I
want this for my professional journal.”
“Will you see that the issue containing your paper is placed in
the local library?”
“Surely,” Meredith said. “Two copies.”
“Brother James is not interested. Brother James, will you
kindly stop whispering nonsense and remove yourself to a nexus
point for a while. I intend to converse with Mr. Meredith. Thank
you.”
The voice of Brother Gregory came nearer, took on a slightly
professorial tone. “Any massive and rotating body assumes the
qualities of magnetism—or rather, gravitic, one-way flux—by
virtue of its rotation, and the two quantities of magnetic momen¬
tum and angular momentum are always proportional to one
another, as you doubtless know.”
Meredith smiled inwardly. A lecture on elementary physics
from a ghost. Well—maybe not so elementary. He remembered
the figures that he’d sweated over. But he could almost envisage
the voice of Brother Gregory emananting from a black-gowned
instructor in front of a classroom board.
“Take a star,” the voice continued. “Say 78 Virginis—from
whose flaming promontories the effect was first deduced a hun¬
dred years ago—and put her against a counter-whirling star of
similar mass. What happens? Energy warp, of the kind we use
every time we polt. But something else happens—did you infer it
from my incomplete expression?”
Meredith grinned. He said: “Yes. Temporal warp.”
“Oh.” There was a trace of disappointment in the voice.
MANNA
95
Meredith added quickly: “But it certainly gave me a headache
figuring it out.”
Gregory was evidently mollified by the admission. “Solids
through time/’ he went on. “Some weeks ago, calculating that
my inherent field was as great in certain respects as that of 78
Virginis, I whirled against a longitudinal line, and forced a stone
back a few days—the nearest I could get to laboratory confirmation.
Knowing there would be a logical extension of the effect if I
whirled against a field as strong as my own, I persuaded Brother
James to co-operate with me—and you know the result.’’
“How far back?’’
“According to my mathematics, the twelfth century, at a time
when we were—alive. I would appreciate your views on the
paradoxes involved.’’
Meredith said: “Certainly. Let’s go over your math together
first. If it fits in with what I’ve already figured, perhaps I’ll have
a suggestion to make. You appreciate, of course, that I can’t let
you have any more cans?’’
“Quite. I must congratulate your company on manufacturing a
most delicious comestible. If you will hand me the roll of
infrared film from your camera, I can make my calculations
visible to you on the emulsion in the darkness. Thank you. It is a
pity,’’ Gregory murmured, “that we could not see with our own
eyes what disposal they made of your product in the days of our
Priory.’’
When, on the morning of a certain bright summer day in
1139, the daily consignment of Miracle Meal failed to arrive at
Selcor Priory, thousands of disappointed refugees went hungry.
The Prior, Dom Holland—who, fortunately for his sanity or at
least his peace of mind, was not in a position to separate cause
from effect—attributed the failure of supply to the lamentable
departure from grace and moral standards of two of the monks.
By disgracing themselves in the kitchen garden with a female
refugee, he said, they had obviously rendered the Priory unfit
to receive any further miraculous bounty.
The abject monks, Brother Gregory and Brother James, were
severely chastised and warned in drastic theological terms that it
would probably be many centuries before they had sufficiently
expiated their sins to attain blessedness.
On the morning of another bright summer day, the Rev. Malachi
Pennyhorse and Stephen Samson were waiting for Sidney Mere¬
dith in the vicar’s comfortable study.
Meredith came in, sank into a century-old leather easy-chair,
stretched his shoes, damp with dew from the meadow grass,
96 Peter Phillips
towards the flames. He accepted a glass of whiskey gratefully,
sipped it.
He said: “The cans are there. And from now on, they stay in
the transit store until the copters collect/’
There was an odd note of regret in his voice.
Samson said: “Fine. Now maybe you’ll tell us what happened
yesterday.’’
Mr. Pennyhorse said: “You . . . uh . . . liked my parishioners,
then?’’
Meredith combined a smile and a sigh. “I surely did. That
Brother Gregory had the most intense and dispassionate intellec¬
tual curiosity of anyone I ever met. He nearly grounded me on
some aspects of energy mathematics. I could have used him in
my department. He’d have made a great research man. Brother
James wasn’t a bad old guy, either. They appeared for me—”
“How did you get rid of them?*’ Samson interrupted.
“They got rid of themselves. Gregory told me how, by whirling
against each other with gravitic fields cutting, they drew the cans
into a vortex of negated time that threw them way back to the
twelfth century. After we’d been through his math, I suggested
they whirl together.”
“What—and throw the cans ahead?”
“No. Themselves, in a sense, since they precipitated a future,
hoped-for state. Gregory had an idea what would happen. So did
I. He’d only discovered the effect recently. Curiosity got the
better of him. He had to try it out straight away. They whirled
together. The fields reinforced, instead of negated. Enough in¬
going energy was generated to whoop their own charges well
above capacity and equilibrium. They just—went. As Gregory
would put it—they were Translated.”
“Upwards, I trust,” said Mr. Pennyhorse gently.
“Amen to that,” said Samson.
Upwards—
Pure thought, unbound, Earth-rid, roaming free amid the wild
bright stars—
Thought to Thought, over galactic vastness, wordless, yet
swift and clear, before egos faded—
“Why didn’t I think of this before? We might have Translated
ourselves centuries ago.”
“But then we would never have tasted Miracle Meal.”
“That is a consideration,” agreed the Thought that had been
Brother Gregory.
MANNA
97
“Remember our third can?” came the Thought that had been
Brother James.
But there was no reply. Something of far greater urgency and
interest than memories of Miracle Meal had occurred to the
Thought that had been Brother Gregory.
With eager curiosity, it was spiraling down into the heart of a
star to observe the integration of helium at first hand.
THE PRISONER IN
THE SKULL _
by “Lewis Padgett” (Henry Kuttner,
1914-1958 and C.L. Moore,
1911- )
Astounding Science Fiction, February
The dream of every anthologist is to discover a major story
that has never been reprinted. This is particularly difficult in
science fiction because there have been more than 800 sf
reprint anthologies published to date, the majority edited by
men and women who were themselves central to the field and
tremendously knowledgeable. We would therefore love to take
credit for finding ‘ The Prisoner in the Skull’’ and bringing it
to your attention but alas, we cannot. Barry N. Malzberg
(himself an excellent anthologist) brought it to us and de¬
serves the honor. Thanks, Barry. — M.H.G.
(There are certain irrepressible yearnings in the human
heart which are universal and which are, therefore, obvious
material for stories that will hit home. Don’t we all long, in
the midst of confusion and frustration, for someone supremely
competent to come in and take over?
Is not this why the typical “woman’s romance“ so often
features the Prince Charming figure, the knight on the white
horse; and why Westerns so often feature the tall, silent
stranger who rides into town, defeats the desperados and then
rides away? Or, for that matter, is it not why Bertie Wooster
has Jeeves?
It is in fantasy that this reaches its peak, and that peak is
surely “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp.” Who of us has
not at some time in his life longed for the services of just such
an all-powerful and utterly subservient genie, whose response
to all requests, however unreasonable, is a calm, “I hear and
obey”?
If science fiction is too disciplined to allow itself the utter
98
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
99
chaos of omnipotence, neither is it forced to restrict itself to
something as dull and straightforward as a man with a gun
and a fast draw. In “The Prisoner in the Skull “ then, we have
a science fictional Lamp, with its limits, its pity, and its
irony .— LA.)
He felt cold and weak, strangely, intolerably, inhumanly weak
with a weakness of the blood and bone, of the mind and soul. He
saw his surroundings dimly, but he saw—other things—with a
swimming clarity that had no meaning to him. He saw causes
and effects as tangible before him as he had once seen trees and
grass. But remote, indifferent, part of another world.
Somehow there was a door before him. He reached vaguely —
It was almost wholly a reflex gesture that moved his finger
toward the doorbell.
The chimes played three soft notes.
John Fowler was staring at a toggle switch. He felt baffled.
The thing had suddenly spat at him and died. Ten minutes ago he
had thrown the main switch, unscrewed the wall plate and made
hopeful gestures with a screwdriver, but the only result was a
growing suspicion that this switch would never work again. Like
the house itself, it was architecturally extreme, and the wires
were sealed in so that the whole unit had to be replaced if it went
bad.
Minor irritations bothered Fowler unreasonably today. He wanted
the house in perfect running order for the guest he was expecting.
He had been chasing Veronica Wood for a long time, and he had
an idea this particular argument might tip the balance in the right
direction.
He made a note to keep a supply of spare toggle switches
handy. The chimes were still echoing softly as Fowler went into
the hall and opened the front door, preparing a smile. But it
wasn’t Veronica Wood on the doorstep. It was a blank man.
That was Fowler’s curious impression, and it was to recur to
him often in the year to come. Now he stood staring at the
strange emptiness of the face that returned his stare without
really seeming to see him. The man’s features were so typical
they might have been a matrix, without the variations that com¬
bine to make up the recognizable individual. But Fowler thought
that even if he had known those features, it would be hard to
recognize a man behind such utter emptiness. You can’t recog¬
nize a man who isn’t there. And there was nothing here. Some
100 Lewis Padgett
erasure, some expunging, had wiped out all trace of character
and personality. Empty.
And empty of strength, too—for the visitant lurched forward
and fell into Fowler’s arms.
Fowler caught him automatically, rather horrified at the light¬
ness of the body he found himself supporting. “Hey,” he said,
and, realizing the inadequacy of that remark, added a few. perti¬
nent questions. But there was no answer. Syncope had taken
over.
Fowler grimaced and looked hopefully up and down the road.
He saw nobody. So he lifted his guest across the threshold and
carried him easily to a couch. Fine, he thought. Veronica due
any minute , and this paperweight barging in.
Brandy seemed to help. It brought no color to the pale cheeks,
but it pried the eyelids open to show a blank, wondering look.
“O.K. now?” Fowler asked, wanting to add, “Then go home.”
There was only the questioning stare. Fowler stood up with
some vague intention of calling a doctor, and then remembered
that the televisor instrument hadn’t yet been delivered. For this
was a day when artificial shortages had begun to supplant real
ones, when raw material was plentiful but consumers were wary,
and were, therefore, put on a starvation diet to build their
appetites and loosen their purse strings. The televisor would be
delivered when the company thought Fowler had waited long
enough.
Luckily he was versatile. As long as the electricity was on he
could jury-rig anything else he needed, including facilities for
first aid. He gave his patient the routine treatment, with satisfy¬
ing results. Until, that is, the brandy suddenly hit certain nerve
centers and emesis resulted.
Fowler lugged his guest back from the bathroom and left him
on the bed in the room with the broken light switch to recuperate.
Convalescence was rapid. Soon the man sat up, but all he did
was look at Fowler hopefully. Questions brought no answers.
Ten minutes later the blank man was still sitting there, looking
blank.
The door chimes sang again. Fowler, assured that his guest
wasn’t in articulo mortis , began to feel irritation. Why the devil
did the guy have to barge in now, at this particular crucial
moment? In fact, where had he come from? It was a mile to the
nearest highway, along a dirt road, and there was no dust on the
man’s shoes. Moreover, there was something indefinably disturb¬
ing about the —lack in his appearance. There was no other word
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
101
that fitted so neatly. Village idiots are popularly termed “wanting,”
and, while there was no question of idiocy here, the man did
seem—
What?
For no reason at all Fowler shivered. The door chimes
reminded him of Veronica. He said: “Wait here. You’ll be all
right. Just wait. I’ll be back—”
There was a question in the soulless eyes.
Fowler looked around. “There’re some books on the shelf. Or
fix this—” He pointed to the wall switch. “If you want anything,
call me.” On that note of haphazard solicitude he went out,
carefully closing the door. After all, he wasn’t his brother’s
keeper. And he hadn’t spent days getting the new house in shape
to have his demonstration go haywire because of an unforseen
interruption.
Veronica was waiting on the threshold. “Hello,” Fowler said.
“Have any trouble finding the place? Come in.”
“It sticks up like a sore thumb,” she informed him. “Hello.
So this is the dream house, is it?”
“Right. After I figure out the right method of dream-analysis,
it’ll be perfect.” He took her coat, led her into the livingroom,
which was shaped like a fat comma and walled with triple-seal
glass, and decided not to kiss her. Veronica seemed withdrawn.
That was regrettable. He suggested a drink.
“Perhaps I’d better have one,” she said, “before I look the
joint over.”
Fowler began battling with a functional bar. It should have
poured and mixed drinks at the spin of a dial, but instead there
came a tinkle of breaking glass. Fowler finally gave up and went
back to the old-fashioned method. “Highball? Well, theoretically,
this is a perfect machine for living. But the architect wasn’t as
perfect as his theoretical ideas. Methods of construction have to
catch up with ideas, you know.”
“This room’s nice,” Veronica acknowledged, relaxing on
airfoam. With a glass in her hand, she seemed more cheerful.
“Almost everything’s curved, isn’t it? And I like the windows.”
“It’s the little things that go wrong. If a fuse blows, a whole
unit goes out. The windows—I insisted on those.”
“Not much of a view.”
“Unimproved. Building restrictions, you know. I wanted to
build on the top of a hill a few miles away, but the township
laws wouldn’t allow it. This house is unorthodox. Not very, but
enough. I might as well have tried to put up a Wright house in
Williamsburg. This place is functional and convenient—”
102
Lewis Padgett
“Except when you want a drink?”
“Trivia,” Fowler said airily. “A house is complicated. You
expect a few things to go wrong at first. I’ll fix ’em as they
come up. I’m a jerk of all trades. Want to look around?”
“Why not?” Veronica said. It wasn’t quite the enthusiastic
reaction for which Fowler had hoped, but he made the best of it.
He showed her the house. It was larger than it had seemed from
the outside. There was nothing super about it, but it was—
theoretically—a functional unit, breaking away completely from
the hidebound traditions that had made attics, cellars, and con¬
ventional bathrooms and kitchens as vestigially unfunctional as
the vermiform appendix. “Anyway,” Fowler said, “statistics
show most accidents happen in kitchens and bathrooms. They
can’t happen here.”
“What’s this?” Veronica asked, opening a door. Fowler
grimaced.
“The guest room,” he said. “That was the single mistake. I’ll
use it for storage or something. The room hasn’t any windows.”
“The light doesn’t work—”
“Oh, I forgot. I turned off the main switch. Be right back.”
He hurried to the closet that held the house controls, flipped the
switch, and returned. Veronica was looking into a room that was
pleasantly furnished as a bedroom, and, with tinted, concealed
fluorescents, seemed light and airy despite the lack of windows.
“I called you,” she said. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Fowler smiled and touched a wall. “Sound-absorbent. The
whole house is that way. The architect did a good job, but this
room—”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing—unless you’re inside and the door should get stuck.
I’ve a touch of claustrophobia.”
“You should face these fears,” said Veronica, who had read
it somewhere. Fowler repressed a slight irritation. There were
times when he had felt an impulse to slap Veronica across the
chops, but her gorgeousness entirely outweighted any weakness
she might have in other directions.
“Air conditioning, too,” he said, touching another switch.
“Fresh as spring breeze. Which reminds me. Does your drink
want freshening?”
“Yes,” Veronica said, and they turned to the comma-shaped
room. It was appreciably darker. The girl went to the window
and stared through the immense, wall-long pane.
“Storm coming up,” she said. “The car radio said it’ll be a
bad one. I’d better go, Johnny.”
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
103
“Must you? You just got here.”
“I have a date. Anyway, I’ve got to work early tomorrow.”
She was a Korys model, much in demand.
Fowler turned from the recalcitrant bar and reached for her
hand.
“I wanted to ask you to marry me,” he said.
There was silence, while leaden gray ness pressed down beyond
the window, and yellow hills rippled under the gusts of unfelt
wind. Veronica met his gaze steadily.
“I know you did. I mean—I’ve been expecting you to.”
“Well?”
She moved her shoulders uneasily.
“Not now.”
“But—Veronica. Why not? We’ve known each other for a
couple of years—’ ’
“The truth is—I’m not sure about you, Johnny. Sometimes I
think I love you. But sometimes I'm not sure I even like you.”
He frowned. “I don’t get that.”
“Well, I can’t explain it. It’s just that I think you could be
either a very nice guy or a very nasty one. And I’d like to be
quite certain first. Now I’ve got to go. It’s starting to rain.”
On that note she went out, leaving Fowler with a sour taste in
his mouth. He mixed himself another drink and wandered over to
his drawing board, where some sketches were sheafed up on a
disorderly fashion. Nuts. He was making good dough at commer¬
cial art, he’d even got himself a rather special house—
One of the drawings caught his eye. It was a background
detail, intended for incorporation later in a larger picture. It
showed a gargoyle, drawn with painstaking care, and a certain
quality of vivid precision that was very faintly unpleasant.
Veronica—
Fowler suddenly remembered his guest and hastily set down
his drink. He had avoided that room during the tour of inspection,
managing to put the man completely out of his mind. That was
too bad. He could have asked Veronica to send out a doctor from
the village.
But the guest didn’t seem to need a doctor. He was working
on the wall-switch, at some danger, Fowler thought, of electro¬
cuting himself. “Look out!” Fowler said sharply. “It’s hot!”
But the man merely gave him a mild, blank stare and passed his
hand downward before the panel.
The light went out.
It came on again, to show the man finishing an upward
gesture.
104
Lewis Padgett
No toggle switch stub protruded from the slot in the center of
the plate. Fowler blinked. “What—?” he said.
Gesture. Blackout. Another gesture.
“What did you do to that?” Fowler asked, but there was no
audible reply.
Fowler drove south through the storm, muttering about ham
electricians. Beside him the guest sat, smiling vacantly. The one
thing Fowler wanted was to get the guy off his hands. A doctor,
or a cop, in the village, would solve that particular problem. Or,
rather, that would have been the solution, if a minor landslide
hadn’t covered the road at a crucial point.
With difficulty Fowler turned the car around and drove back
home, cursing gently.
The blank man sat obediently at his side.
They were marooned for three days. Luckily the larder was
well-stocked, and the power lines, which ran underground, weren’t
cut by the storm. The water-purifying unit turned the muddy
stream from outside into crystalline nectar, the FM set wasn’t
much bothered by atmospheric disturbances, and Fowler had
plenty of assignments to keep him busy at his drawing board.
But he did no drawing. He was exploring a fascinating, though
unbelievable, development.
The light switch his guest had rigged was unique. Fowler
discovered that when he took the gadget apart. The sealed plastic
had been broken open, and a couple of wires had been rewound
in an odd fashion. The wiring didn’t make much sense to Fowler.
There was no photo-electric hookup that would have explained
it. But the fact remained that he could turn on the lights in that
room by moving his hand upward in front of the switch plate,
and reverse the process with a downward gesture.
He made tests. It seemed as though an invisible fourteen-inch
beam extended directly outward from the switch. At any rate,
gestures, no matter how emphatic, made beyond that fourteen-
inch distance had no effect on the lights at all.
Curious, he asked his guest to rig up another switch in the
same fashion. Presently all the switches in the house were
converted, but Fowler was no wiser. He could duplicate the
hookup, but he didn’t understand the principle. He felt a little
frightened.
Locked in the house for three days, he had time to wonder and
worry. He fed his guest—who had forgotten the use of knife and
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
105
fork, if he had ever known it—and he tried to make the man
talk. Not too successfully.
Once the man said: “Forgotten . . . forgotten—”
“You haven’t forgotten how to be an electrician. Where did
you come from?”
The blank face turned to him. “Where?” A pause. And then—
“When? Time . . . time—”
Once he picked up a newspaper and pointed questioningly at
the date line—the year.
“That’s right,” Fowler said, his stomach crawling. “What
year did you think it was?”
“Wrong—” the man said. “Forgotten—”
Fowler stared. On impulse, he got up to search his guest’s
pockets. But there were no pockets. The suit was ordinary,
though slightly strange in cut, but it had no pockets.
“What’s your name?”
“No answer.
“Where did you come from? Another— time ?”
Still no answer.
Fowler thought of robots. He thought of a soulless world of
the future peopled by automatons. But he knew neither was the
right answer. The man sitting before him was horribly normal.
And empty, somehow—drained. Normal?
The norm? That non-existant, figurative symbol which would
be monstrous if it actually appeared? The closer an individual
approaches the norm, the more colorless he is. Just as a contract¬
ing line becomes a point, which has few, if any, distinguishing
characteristics. One point is exactly like another point. As though
humans, in some unpleasant age to come, had been reduced to
the lowest common denominator.
The norm.
“All right,” Fowler said. “I’ll call you Norman, till you
remember your right name. But you can’t be a . . . point.
You’re no moron. You’ve got a talent for electricity, anyhow.”
Norman had other talents, too, as Fowler was to discover
soon. He grew tired of looking through the window at the gray,
pouring rain, pounding down over a drenched and dreary landscape,
and when he tried to close the built-in Venetian shutters, of
course they failed to work. “May that architect be forced to live
in one of his own houses,” Fowler said, and, noticing Norman
made explanatory gestures toward the window.
Norman smiled blankly .
“The view,” Fowler said. “I don’t like to see all that rain.
The shutters won’t work. See if you can fix them. The view—”
106
Lewis Padgett
He explained patiently, and presently Norman went out to the
unit nominally called a kitchen, though it was far more efficient.
Fowler shrugged and sat down at his drawing board. He looked
up, some while later, in time to see Norman finish up with a few
swabs of cloth. Apparently he had been painting the window
with water.
Fowler snorted. “I didn’t ask you to wash it,” he remarked.
“It was the shutters—”
Norman laid a nearly empty basin on a table and smiled
expectantly. Fowler suffered a slight reorientation. “Time-traveling,
ha,” he said. “You probably crashed out of some booby hatch.
The sooner I can get you back there the better I’ll like it. If it’d
only stop raining ... I wonder if you could rig up the televisor?
No, I forgot. We don’t even have one yet. And I suspect you
couldn’t do it. That light switch business was a fluke.”
He looked out at the rain and thought of Veronica. Then she
was there before him, dark and slender, smiling a little.
“Wha—” Fowler said throatily.
He blinked. Hallucinations? He looked again, and she was still
there, three-dimensionally, outside the window—
Norman smiled and nodded. He pointed to the apparition.
“Do you see it too?” Fowler asked madly. “It can’t be. She’s
outside. She’ll get wet. What in the name of—”
But it was only Fowler who got wet, dashing out bareheaded
in the drenching rain. There was no one outside. He looked
through the window and saw the familiar room, and Norman.
He came back. “Did you paint her on the window?” he asked.
“But you’ve never seen Veronica. Besides, she’s moving—three-
dimensional. Oh, it can’t be. My mind’s snapping. I need peace
and quiet. A green thought in a green shade.” He focused on a
green thought, and Veronica faded out slowly. A cool, quiet,
woodland glade was visible through the window.
After a while Fowler figured it out. His window made thoughts
visible.
It wasn’t as simple as that, naturally. He had to experiment
and brood for quite some time. Norman was no help. But the
fact finally emerged that whenever Fowler looked at the window
and visualized something with strong emphasis, an image of that
thought appeared—a projective screen, so to speak.
It was like throwing a stone into calm water. The ripples
moved out for a while, and then slowly quieted. The woodland
scene wasn’t static; there was a breeze there, and the leaves
glittered and the branches swayed. Clouds moved sofdy across a
blue sky. It was a scene Fowler finally recognized, a Vermont
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
107
woodland he had seen years ago. Yet when did sequoias ever
grow in Vermont?
A composite, then. And the original impetus of his thoughts
set the scene into action along normal lines. When he visualized
the forest, he had known that there would be a wind, and that the
branches would move. So they moved. But slower and slower—
though it took a long while for the action to run down.
He tried again. This time Chicago’s lake shore. Cars rushed
along the drive. He tried to make them run backwards, but got a
sharp headache and a sense of watching a jerky film. Possibly he
could reverse the normal course of events, but his mind wasn’t
geared to handle film running backward. Then he thought hard
and watched a seascape appear through the glass. This time he
waited to see how long it would take the image to vanish. The
action stopped in an hour, but the picture did not face completely
for another hour.
Only then did the possibilities strike him with an impact as
violent as lightning.
Considerable poetry has been written about what happens
when love rejected turns to hate. Psychology could explain the
cause as well as the effect—the mechanism of displacement.
Energy has to go somewhere, and if one channel is blocked,
another will be found. Not that Veronica had definitely rejected
Fowler, and certainly his emotion for the girl had not suffered an
alchemic transformation, unless one wishes to delve into the
abysses of psychology in which love is merely the other face of
hatred—but on those levels of semantic confusion you can easily
prove anything.
Call it reorientation. Fowler had never quite let himself be¬
lieve that Veronica wouldn’t fall into his arms. His ego was
damaged. Consequently it had to find some other justification,
some assurance—and it was unfortunate for Norman that the
displacement had to occur when he was available as scapegoat.
For the moment Fowler began to see the commercial possibilities
of the magic windowpane, Norman was doomed.
Not at once; in the beginning, Fowler would have been shocked
and horrified had he seen the end result of his plan. He was no
villain, for there are no villains. There is a check-and-balance
system, as inevitable in nature and mind as in politics, and the
balance was beginning to tip when Fowler locked Norman in
the windowless room for safekeeping and drove to New York to
see a patent attorney. He was careful at first. He knew the
formula for the telepathically-recepdve window paint by now,
108
Lewis Padgett
but he merely arranged to patent the light-switch gadget that was
operated by a gesture. Afterwards, he regretted his ignorance,
for clever infringements appeared on the heels of his own device.
He hadn’t known enough about the matter to protect himself
thoroughly in the patent.
By a miracle, he had kept the secret of the telepathic paint to
himself. All this took time, naturally, and meanwhile Norman,
urged on by his host, had made little repairs and improvements
around the house. Some of them were impractical, but others
were decidedly worth using—short-cuts, conveniences, clever
methods of bridging difficulties that would be worth money in
the open market. Norman’s way of thinking seemed curiously
alien. Given a problem, he could solve it, but he had no initia¬
tive on his own. He seemed satisfied to stay in the house—
Well, satisfied was scarcely the word. He was satisfied in the
same sense that a jellyfish is satisfied to remain in its pool. If
there were quivers of volition, slight directional stirrings, they
were very feeble indeed. There were times when Fowler, study¬
ing his guest, decided that Norman was in a psychotic state—
catatonic stupor seemed the most appropriate label. The man’s
will was submerged, if, indeed, he had ever had any.
No one has ever detailed the probable reactions of the man
who owned the goose who laid the golden eggs. He brooded
over a mystery, and presently took empirical steps, afterwards
regretted. Fowler had a more analytical mind, and suspected that
Norman might be poised at a precarious state of balance, during
which—and only during which—he laid golden eggs. Metal can
be pliable until pressure is used, after which it may become
work-hardened and inflexible. Fowler was afraid of applying too
much pressure. But he was equally afraid of not finding out all
he could about the goose’s unusual oviparity.
So he studied Norman. It was like watching a shadow. Nor¬
man seemed to have none of the higher reflexes; his activities
were little more than tropism. Ego-consciouness was present,
certainly, but—where had he come from? What sort of place or
time had it been? Or was Norman simply a freak, a lunatic, a
mutation? All that seemed certain was that part of his brain
didn’t know its own function. Without conscious will or volition,
it was useless. Fowler had to supply the volition; he had to give
orders. Between orders, Norman simply sat, occasionally quiver¬
ing slightly.
It was bewildering. It was fascinating.
Also, it might be a little dangerous. Fowler had no intention of
letting his captive escape if he could help it, but vague recollec-
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
109
tions of peonage disturbed him sometimes. Probably this was
illegal. Norman ought to be in an institution, under medical care.
But then, Norman had such unusual talents!
Fowler, to salve his uneasiness, ceased to lock the door of the
windowless room. By now he had discovered it was unnecessary,
anyhow. Norman was like a subject in deep hypnosis. He would
obey when told not to leave the room. Fowler, with a layman’s
knowledge of law, thought that probably gave him an out. He
pictured himself in* the dock blandly stating that Norman had
never been a prisoner, had always been free to leave the house if
he chose.
Actually, only hunger would rouse Norman to disobey Fowler’s
commands to stay in his room. He would have to be almost
famished, even then, before he would go to the kitchen and eat
whatever he found, without discrimination and apparently with¬
out taste.
Time went by. Fowler was reorienting, though he scarcely
knew it yet, toward a whole new set of values. He let his
illustrating dwindle away until he almost ceased to accept orders.
This was after an abortive experiment with Norman in which he
tried to work out on paper an equivalent of the telepathic pictures
on glass. If he could simply sit and think his drawings onto
bristol board—
That was, however, one of Norman’s failures.
It wasn’t easy to refrain from sharing this wonderful new
secret with Veronica. Fowler found himself time and again
shutting his lips over the information just in time. He didn’t
invite her out to the house any more; Norman was too often
working at odd jobs around the premises. Beautiful visions of the
future were building up elaborately in Fowler’s mind—Veronica
wrapped in mink and pearls, himself commanding financial em¬
pires all based on Norman’s extraordinary talents and Norman’s
truly extraordinary willingness to obey.
That was because of his physical weakness, Fowler felt sure.
It seemed to take so much of Norman’s energy simply to breathe
and eat that nothing remained. And after the solution of a
problem, a complete fatigue overcame him. He was useless for a
day or two between jobs, recovering from the utter exhaustion
that work seemed to induce. Fowler was quite willing to accept
that. It made him even surer of his—guest. The worst thing that
could happen, of course, would be Norman’s recovery, his
return to normal—
110
Lewis Padgett
Money began to come in very satisfactorily, although Fowler
wasn’t really a good business man. In fact, he was a remarkably
poor one. It didn’t matter much. There was always more where
the first had come from.
With some of the money Fowler started cautious inquiries
about missing persons. He wanted to be sure no indignant rela¬
tives would turn up and demand an accounting of all this money.
He questioned Norman futilely.
Norman simply could not talk. His mind was too empty for
coherence. He could produce words, but he could not connect
them. And this was a thing that seemed to give him his only real
trouble. For he wanted desperately sometimes to speak. There
was something he seemed frantic to tell Fowler, in the intervals
when his strength was at its peak.
Fowler didn’t want to know it. Usually when Norman reached
this pitch he set him another exhausting problem. Fowler won¬
dered for awhile just why he dreaded hearing the message.
Presently he faced the answer.
Norman might be trying to explain how he could be cured.
Eventually, Fowler had to face an even more unwelcome
truth. Norman did seem in spite of everything to be growing
stronger.
He was working one day on a vibratory headset gimmick later
to be known as a Hed-D-Acher, when suddenly he threw down
his tools and faced Fowler over the table with a look that
bordered on animation—for Norman.
“Sick—’’ he said painfully. “I . . . know . . . work :/” It was
an anathema. He made a defiant gesture and pushed the tools
away.
Fowler, with a sinking sensation, frowned at the rebellious
nonentity.
“All right, Norman,’* he said soothingly. “All right. You can
rest when you finish this job. You must finish it first, though.
You must finish this job, Norman. Do you understand that? You
must finish—*’
It was sheer accident, of course—or almost accident—that
the job turned out to be much more complicated than Fowler had
expected. Norman, obedient to the slow, repeated commands,
worked very late and very hard.
The end of the job found him so completely exhausted he
couldn’t speak or move for three days.
As a matter of fact it was the Hed-D-Acher that turned out to
be an important milestone in Fowler’s progress. He couldn’t
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
111
recognize it at the time, but when he looked back, years later, he
saw the occasion of his first serious mistake. His first, that is,
unless you count the moment when he lifted Norman across his
threshold at the very start of the thing.
Fowler had to go to Washington to defend himself in some
question of patent infringement. A large firm had found out
about the Hed-D-Acher and jumped in on the grounds of similar
wiring—at least that was Fowler’s impression. He was no
technician. The main point was that the Hed-D-Acher couldn’t
be patented in its present form, and Fowler’s rivals were trying
to squeeze through a similar—and stolen—Hed-D-Acher of their
own.
Fowler phoned the Korys Agency. Long distance television
was not on the market yet and he was not able to see Veronica’s
face, but he knew what expression must be visible on it when he
told her what he wanted.
“But I’m going out on a job, John. I can’t just drop every¬
thing and rush out to your house.’’
“Listen, Veronica, there may be a hundred thousand bucks in
it. I . . . there’s no one else I can trust.’’ He didn’t add his chief
reason for trusting her—the fact that she wasn’t over-bright.
In the end, she went. Dramatic situations appealed to her, and
he dropped dark hints of corporation espionage and bloody doings
on Capitol Hill. He told her where to find the key and she hung
up, leaving Fowler to gnaw his nails intermittently and try to
limit himself to one whiskey-soda every half hour. He was
paged, it seemed to him, some years later.
“Hello, Veronica?’’
“Right. I’m at the house. The key was where you said. Now
what?’’
Fowler had had time to work out a plan. He put pencil and
note pad on the jutting shelf before him and frowned slightly.
This might be a risk, but—
But he intended to marry Veronica, so it was no great risk.
And she wasn’t smart enough to figure out the real answers.
He told her about the windowless room. “That’s my house-
boy’s—Norman. He’s slightly half-witted, but a good boy on
mechanical stuff. Only he’s a little deaf, and you’ve got to tell
him a thing three times before he understands it.’’
“I think I’d better get out of here,’’ Veronica remarked.
“Next you’ll be telling me he’s a homicidal maniac.”
Fowler laughed heartily. “There’s a box in the kitchen—it’s
in that red cupboard with the blue handle. It’s pretty heavy. But
112
Lewis Padgett
see if you can manage it. Take it in to Norman and tell him to
make another Hed-D-Acher with a different wiring circuit.”
“Are you drunk?”
Fowler repressed an impulse to bite the mouthpiece off the
telephone. His nerves were crawling under his skin. “This isn’t
a gag, Veronica. I told you how important it is. A hundred
thousand bucks isn’t funny. Look, got a pencil? Write this
down.” He dictated some technical instructions he had gleaned
by asking the right questions. “Tell that to Norman. He’ll find
all the materials and tools he needs in the box.”
“If this is a gag—” Veronica said, and there was a pause.
“Well, hang on.”
Silence drew on. Fowler tried to hear what was happening so
many miles away. He caught a few vague sounds, but they were
meaningless. Then voices rose in loud debate.
“Veronica!” Fowler shouted. “Veronica!” There was no
answer.
After that, voices again, but softer. And presently:
“Johnny,” Veronica said, “if you ever pull a trick like that
on me again—”
“What happened?”
“Hiding a gibbering idiot in your house—” She was breathing
fast.
“He’s . . . what did he do? What happened?"
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Except when I opened the door
your houseboy walked out and began running around the house
like a ... a bat. He was trying to talk—Johnny, he scared me!”
She was plaintive.
“Where is he now?”
“Back in his room. I ... I was afraid of hirti. But I was
trying not to show it. I thought if I could get him back in and
lock the door—I spoke to him, and he swung around at me so
fast I guess I let out aj^elL And then he kept trying to say
something—”
“What?”
“How should I know? He’s in his room, but I couldn’t find a
key to it. I’m not staying here a minute longer. I . . . here he
comes!"
“Veronica! Tell him to go back to his room. Loud and—like
you mean it!”
She obeyed. Fowler could hear her saying it. She said it
several times.
“It doesn’t work. He’s going out—”
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
113
“Stop him!”
“I won’t! I had enough trouble coaxing him back the first
time—”
“Let me talk to him,” Fowler said suddenly. “He’ll obey me.
Hold the phone to his ear. Get him to listen to me.” He raised
his voice to a shout. “ Norman! Come her el Listen to me!”
Outside the booth people were turning to stare, but he ignored
them.
He heard a faint mumble and recognized it.
“Norman,” he said, more quietly but with equal firmness.
“Do exactly what I tell you to do. Don’t leave the house. Don’t
leave the house. Don't leave the house . Do you understand?”
Mumble. Then words: “Can’t get out . . . can’t—”
“Don’t leave the house. Build another Hed-D-Acher. Do it
now. Get the equipment you need and build it in the living room,
on the table where the telephone is. Do it now.”
A pause, and then Veronica said shakily: “He’s gone back to
his room. Johnny, I . . . he’s coming back! With that box of
stuff—”
“Let me talk to him again. Get yourself a drink. A couple of
’em.” He needed Veronica as his interpreter, and the best way to
keep her there would be with the aid of Dutch courage.
“Well—here he is.”
Norman mumbled.
Fowler referred to his notes. He gave firm, incisive, detailed
directions. He told Norman exactly what he wanted. He repeated
his orders several times.
And it ended with Norman building a Hed-D-Acher, with a
different type of circuit, while Veronica watched, made measure-
ments as Fowler commanded, and relayed the information across
the wire. By the time she got slightly high, matters were pro¬
gressing more smoothly. There was the danger that she might
make inaccurate measurements, but Fowler insisted on check and
double-check of each detail.
Occasionally he spoke to Norman. Each time the man’s voice
was weaker. The dangerous surge of initiative was passing as
energy drained out of Norman while his swift fingers flew.
In the end, Fowler had his information, and Norman, com¬
pletely exhausted, was ordered back to his room. According to
Veronica, he went there obediently and fell flat on the floor.
“I’ll buy you a mink coat,” Fowler said. “See you later.”
“But—”
“I’ve got to hurry. Tell you all about it when I see you.”
* * *
114
Lewis Padgett
He got the patent, by the skin of his teeth. There was instant
litigation, which was why he didn’t clean up on the gadget
immediately. He was willing to wait. The goose still laid golden
eggs.
But he was fully aware of the danger now. He had to keep
Norman busy. For unless the man’s strength remained at a
minimum, initiative would return. And there would be nothing to
stop Norman from walking out of the house, or—
Or even worse. For Fowler could, after all, keep the doors
locked. But he knew that locks wouldn’t imprison Norman long
once the man discovered how to pose a problem to himself.
Once Norman thought: Problem how to escape —then his clever
hands would construct a wall-melter or a matter-transmitter, and
that would be the end for Fowler.
Norman had one specialized talent. To keep that operating
efficiently—for Fowler’s purpose—all Norman’s other faculties
had to be cut down to minimum operation speed.
The rosy light in the high-backed booth fell flatteringly upon
Veronica’s face. She twirled her martini glass on the table and
said: “But John, I don’t think I want to marry you.” The martini
glass shot pinpoints of soft light in his face as she turned it. She
looked remarkably pretty, even for a Korys model. Fowler felt
like strangling her.
“Why not?” he demanded.
She shrugged. She had been blowing hot and cold, so far as
Fowler was concerned, ever since the day she had seen Norman.
Fowler had been able to buy her back, at intervals, with gifts or
moods that appealed to her, but the general drift had been toward
estrangement. She wasn’t intelligent, but she did have sensitivity
of a sort, and it served its purpose. It was stopping her from
marrying John Fowler.
“Maybe we’re too much alike, Johnny,” she said reflectively.
“I don’t know. I. . . how’s that miserable house-boy of yours?”
“Is that still bothering you?” His voice was impatient. She
had been showing too much concern over Norman. It had probably
been a mistake to call her in at all, but what else could he have
done? “I wish you’d forget about Norman. He’s all right.”
“Johnny, I honestly do think he ought to be under a doctor’s
care. He didn’t look at all well that day. Are you sure—”
“Of course I’m sure! What do you take me for? As a matter of
fact, he is under a doctor’s care. Norman’s just feeble-minded.
“I’ve told you that a dozen times, Veronica. I wish you’d take
my word for it. He ... he sees a doctor regularly. It was just
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
115
having you there that upset him. Strangers throw him off his
balance. He’s fine now. Let’s forget about Norman. We were
talking about getting married, remember?”
“You were. Not me. No, Johnny, I’m afraid it wouldn’t
work.” She looked at him in the soft light, her face clouded with
doubt and—was it suspicion? With a woman of Veronica’s
mentality, you never knew just where you stood. Fowler could
reason her out of every objection she offered to him, but because
reason meant so little to her, the solid substratum of her convic¬
tions remained unchanged.
“You’ll marry me,” he said, his voice confident.
“No.” She gave him an uneasy look and then drew a deep
breath and said: “You may as well know this now, Johnny—I’ve
just about decided to marry somebody else.”
“Who?” He wanted to shout the question, but he forced
himself to be calm.
“No one you know. Ray Bamaby. I . . . I’ve pretty well
made up my mind about it, John.”
“I don’t know the man,” Fowler told her evenly, “but I’ll
make it my business to find out all I can.”
“Now John, let’s not quarrel. I—”
“You’re going to marry me or nobody, Veronica.” Fowler
was astonished at the sudden violence of his own reaction. “Do
you understand that?”
“Don’t be silly, John. You don’t own me.”
“I’m not being silly! I’m just telling you.”
“John, I’ll do exactly as I please. Now, let’s not quarrel about
it.”
Until now, until this moment of icy rage, he had never quite
realized what an obsession Veronica had become. Fowler had
got out of the habit of being thwarted. His absolute power over
one individual and one unchanging situation was giving him a
taste for tyranny. He sat looking at Veronica in the pink dimness
of the booth, grinding his teeth together in an effort not to shout
at her.
“If you go through with this, Veronica, I’ll make it my
business to see you regret it as long as you live,” he told her in a
harsh, low voice.
She pushed her half-emptied glass aside with sudden violence
that matched his. “Don’t get me started, John Fowler!” she said
angrily. “I’ve got a temper, too! I’ve always known there was
something I didn’t like about you.”
“There’ll be a lot more you don’t like if you—”
“That’s enough, John!” She got up abruptly, clutching at her
116
Lewis Padgett
slipping handbag. Even in this soft light he could see the sudden
hardening of her face, the lines of anger pinching downward
along her nose and mouth. A perverse triumph filled him be¬
cause at this moment she was ugly in her rage, but it did not
swerve his determination.
“You’re going to marry me,’’ he told her harshly. “Sit down.
You’re going to marry me if I have to—’’ He paused.
“To what?*’ Her voice was goading. He shook his head. He
couldn’t finish the threat aloud.
Norman will help me, he was thinking in cold triumph. Norman
will find a way.
He smiled thinly after her as she stalked in a fury out of the
bar.
For a week Fowler heard no more from her. He made inquiries
about the man Bamaby and was not surprised to learn that
Veronica’s intended—if she had really been serious about the
fellow, after all—was a young broker of adequate income and
average stupidity. A nonentity. Fowler told himself savagely
that they were two of a kind and no doubt deserved each other.
But his obsession still ruled him, and he was determined that no
one but himself should marry Veronica.
Short of hypnosis, there seemed no immediate way to change
her mind. But perhaps he could change Bamaby’s. He believed
he could, given enough time. Norman was at work on a rather
ingenious little device involving the use of a trick lighting system.
Fowler had been impressed, on consideration, by the effect of a
rosy light in the bar on Veronica’s appearance.
Another week passed, with no news about Veronica. Fowler
told himself he could afford to remain aloof. He had the means
to control her very nearly within his grasp. He would watch her,
and wait his time in patience.
He was very busy, too, with other things. Two more devices
were ready for patenting—the Magic Latch keyed to fingerprint
patterns, and the Haircut Helmet that could be set for any sort of
hair trimming and would probably wreak havoc among barbers.
But litigation on the Hed-D-Acher was threatening to be expensive,
and Fowler had learned already to live beyond his means. Far
beyond. It seemed ridiculous to spend only what he took in each
day, when such fortunes in royalties were just around the comer.
Twice he had to take Norman off the lighting device to
perform small tasks in other directions. And Norman was in
himself a problem.
The work exhausted him. It had to exhaust him. That was
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
117
necessary. An unpleasant necessity, of course, but there it was.
Sometimes the exhaustion in Norman’s eyes made one uncom¬
fortable. Certainly Norman suffered. But because he was seldom
able to show it plainly, Fowler could tell himself that perhaps he
imagined the worst part of it. Casuistry, used to good purpose,
helped him to ignore what he preferred not to see.
By the end of the second week, Fowler decided not to wait on
Veronica any longer. He bought a dazzling solitaire diamond
whose cost faintly alarmed even himself, and a wedding band
that was a full circle of emerald-cut diamonds to complement it.
With ten thousand dollars worth of jewelry in his pocket, he
went into the city to pay her a call.
Bamaby answered the door.
Stupidly Fowler heard himself saying: “Miss Wood here?’’
Bamaby, grinning, shook his head and started to answer.
Fowler knew perfectly well what he was about to say. The
fatuous grin would have told him even if some accurate sixth
sense had not already made it clear. But he wouldn’t let Bamaby
say it. He thrust the startled bridegroom aside and shouldered
angrily into the apartment, calling: “Veronica! Veronica, where
are you?’’
She came out of the kitchen in a ruffled apron, apprehension
and defiance on her face.
“You can just get right out of here, John Fowler,’’ she said
firmly. Bamaby came up from behind him and began a bluster¬
ing remonstrance, but she slipped past Fowler and linked her arm
with Bamaby’s, quieting him with a touch.
“We were married day before yesterday, John,’’ she said.
Fowler was astonished to discover that the cliche about a red
swimming maze of rage was perfectly true. The room and the
bridal couple shimmered before him for an instant. He could
hardly breathe in the suffocating fury that swam in his brain.
He took out the white velvet box, snapped it open and waved
it under Veronica’s nose. Liquid fire quivered in the myriad cut
surfaces of the jewels and for an instant pure greed made
Veronica’s face as hard as the diamonds.
Bamaby said: “I think you’d better go, Fowler.’’
In silence, Fowler went.
The little light-device wouldn’t do now. He would need some¬
thing more powerful for his revenge. Norman put the completed
gadget aside and began to work on something new. There would
be a use for the thing later. Already plans were spinning them¬
selves out in Fowler’s mind.
118
Lewis Padgett
They would be expensive plans. Fowler took council with
himself and decided that the moment had come to put the magic
window on the market.
Until now he had held this in reserve. Perhaps he had even
been a little afraid of possible repercussions. He was artist
enough to know that a whole new art-form might result from a
practical telepathic projector. There were so many possibilities—
But the magic window failed.
Not wholly, of course. It was a miracle, and men always will
buy miracles. But it wasn’t the instant, overwhelming financial
success Fowler had felt certain it would be. For one thing,
perhaps this was too much of a miracle. Inventions can’t become
popular until the culture is ready for them. Talking films were
made in Paris by Meli&s around 1890, but perhaps because that
was a double miracle, nobody took to the idea. As for a tele¬
pathic screen—
It was a specialized luxury item. And it wasn’t as easy or as
safe to enjoy as one might suppose. For one thing, few minds
turned out to be disciplined enough to maintain a picture they
deliberately set out to evoke. As a mass entertaining medium it
suffered from the same faults as family motion pictures—other
peoples’ memories and dreams are notoriously boring unless one
sees oneself in them.
Besides, this was too close to pure telepathy to be safe.
Fowler had lived alone too long to remember the perils of
exposing one’s thoughts to a group. Whatever he wanted to
project on his private window, he projected. But in the average
family it wouldn’t do. It simply wouldn’t do.
Some Hollywood companies and some millionaires leased
windows—Fowler refused to sell them outright. A film studio
photographed a batch of projected ideations and cut them into a
dream sequence for a modem Cinderella story. But trick photog¬
raphy had already done work so similar that it made no sensation
whatever. Even Disney had done some of the stuff better. Until
trained imaginative projective artists could be developed, the
windows were simply not going to be a commercial success.
One ethnological group tried to use a window to project the
memories of oldsters in an attempt to recapture everyday living
customs of the recent past, but the results were blurred and
inaccurate, full of anachronisms. They all had to be winnowed
and checked so completely that little of value remained. The fact
stood out that the ordinary mind is too undisciplined to be worth
anything as a projector. Except as a toy, the window was useless.
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
119
It was useless commercially. But for Fowler it had one intrin¬
sic usefulness more valuable than money—
One of the wedding presents Vemonica and Bamaby received
was a telepathic window. It came anonymously. Their suspicions
should have been roused. Perhaps they were, but they kept the
window. After all, in her modeling work Veronica had met many
wealthy people, and Bamaby also had moneyed friends, any of
whom might in a generous mood have taken a window-lease for
them as a goodwill gesture. Also, possession of a magic window
was a social distinction. They did not allow themselves to look
the gift-horse too closely in the mouth. They kept the window.
They could not have known—though they might have guessed—
that this was a rather special sort of window. Norman had been
at work on it through long, exhausting hours, while Fowler stood
over him with the goading repetitious commands that kept him at
his labor.
Fowler was not too disappointed at the commercial failure of
the thing. There were other ways of making money. So long as
Norman remained his to command the natural laws of supply and
demand did not really affect him. He had by now almost entirely
ceased to think in terms of the conventional mores. Why should
he? They no longer applied to him. His supply of money and
resources was limitless. He never really had to suffer for a
failure. It would always be Norman, not Fowler, who suffered.
There was unfortunately no immediate way in which he could
check how well his magic window was working. To do that you
would have to be an invisible third person in the honeymoon
apartment. But Fowler, knowing Veronica as he did, could
guess.
The window was based on the principle that if you give a child
a jackknife he’ll probably cut himself.
Fowler’s first thought had been to create a window on which
he could project his own thoughts, disguised as those of the bride
or groom. But he had realized almost immediately that a far
more dangerous tool lay ready-made in the minds of the two
whose marriage he meant to undermine.
“It isn’t as if they wouldn’t break up anyhow, in a year or
two,’’ he told himself as he speculated on the possibilities of his
magic window. He was not justifying his intent. He didn’t need
to, any more. He was simply considering possibilities. “They’re
both stupid, they’re both selfish. They’re not material you could
make a good marriage of. This ought to be almost too easy—’’
Every man, he reasoned, has a lawless devil in his head. What
120
Lewis Padgett
filters through the censor-band from the unconscious mind is
controllable. But the lower levels of the brain are utterly without
morals.
Norman produced a telepathic window that would at times
project images from the unconscious mind.
It was remotely controlled, of course; most of the time it
operated on the usual principles of the magic window. But
whenever Fowler chose he could throw a switch that made the
glass twenty miles away hypersensitive.
Before he threw it for the first time, he televised Veronica. It
was evening. When the picture dawned in the television he could
see the magic window set up in its elegant frame within range of
the televisor, so that everyone who called might be aware of the
Bamaby’s distinction.
Lucidly it was Veronica who answered, though 3amaoy was
visible in the background, turning toward the ’visor an interested
glance that darkened when Fowler’s face dawned upon the screen.
Veronica’s politely expectant look turned sullen as she recog¬
nized the caller.
“Well?”
Fowler grinned. “Oh, nothing. Just wondered how you were
getting along.”
“Beautifully, thanks. Is that all?”
Fowler shrugged. “If that’s the way you feel, yes.”
“Good-by,” Veronica said firmly, and flicked the switch. The
screen before Fowler went blank. He grinned. All he had wanted
to do was remind her of himself. He touched the stud that would
activate that magic window he had just seen, and settled down to
wait.
What would happen now he didn’t know. Something would.
He hoped the sight of him had reminded Veronica of the daz¬
zling jewelry he had carried when they last met. He hoped that
upon the window now would be dawning a covetous image of
those diamonds, clear as dark water and quivering with fiery
light. The sight should be enough to rouse resentment in Bamaby’s
mind, and when two people quarrel wholeheartedly, there are
impulses toward mayhem in even the most civilized mind. It
should shock the bride and groom to see on a window that
reflected their innermost thoughts a picture of hatred and wishful
violence. Would Veronica see herself being strangled in effigy in
the big wall-frame? Would Bamaby see himself bleeding from
the deep scratches his bride would be yearning to score across
his face?
Fowler sat back comfortably, luxuriating in speculation.
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL 121
It might take a long time. It might take years. He was willing
to wait.
It took even longer than Fowler had expected. Slowly the
poison built up in the Bamaby household, very slowly. And in
that time a different sort of toxicity developed in Fowler’s. He
scarcely realized it. He was too close.
He never recognized the moment when his emotional balance
shifted and he began actively to hate Norman.
The owner of the golden goose must have lived under consider¬
able strain. Every day when he went out to look in the nest he
must have felt a quaking wonder whether this time the egg would
be white, and valuable only for omelets or hatching. Also, he
must have had to stay very close to home, living daily with the
nightmare of losing his treasure—
Norman was a prisoner—but a prisoner handcuffed to his
jailer. Both men were chained. If Fowler left him alone for too
long, Norman might recover. It was the inevitable menace that
made travel impossible. Fowler could keep no servants; he lived
alone with his prisoner. Occasionally he thought of Norman as a
venomous snake whose poison fangs had to be removed each
time they were renewed. He dared not cut out the poison sacs
themselves, for there was no way to do that without killing the
golden goose. The mixed metaphors were indicative of the state
of Fowler’s mind by then.
And he was almost as much a prisoner in the house as Norman
was.
Constantly now he had to set Norman problems to solve
simply as a safety measure, whether or not they had commercial
value. For Norman was slowly regaining his strength. He was
never completely coherent, but he could talk a little more, and he
managed to put across quite definitely his tremendous urge to
give Fowler certain obscure information.
Fowler knew, of course, what it probably was. The cure. And
Norman seemed to have a strangely touching confidence that if
he could only frame his message intelligibly, Fowler would
make arrangements for the mysterious cure.
Once Fowler might have been touched by the confidence. Not
now. Because he was exploiting Norman so ruthlessly, he had to
hate either Norman or himself. By a familiar process he was
projecting his own fault upon his prisoner and punishing Norman
for it. He no longer speculated upon Norman’s mysterious origin
or the source of his equally mysterious powers. There was
122
Lewis Padgett
obviously something in that clouded mind that gave forth flashes
of a certain peculiar genius. Fowler accepted the fact and used it.
There was probably some set of rules that would govern what
Norman could and could not do, but Fowler did not discover—
until it was too late—what the rules were. Norman could pro¬
duce inconceivably intricate successes, and then fail dismally at
the simplest tasks.
Curiously, he turned out to be an almost infallible finder of
lost articles, so long as they were lost in the confines of the
house. Fowler discovered this by accident, and was gratified to
learn that for some reason that kind of search was the most
exhausting task he could set for his prisoner. When all else
failed, and Norman still seemed too coherent or too strong for
safekeeping, Fowler had only to remember that he had misplaced
his wristwatch or a book or screwdriver, and to send Norman
after it.
Then something very odd happened, and after that he stopped
the practice, feeling bewildered and insecure. He had ordered
Norman to find a lost folder of rather important papers. Norman
had gone into his own room and closed the door. He was missing
for a long time. Eventually Fowler’s impatience built up enough
to make him call off the search, and he shouted to Norman to
come out.
There was no answer. When he had called a third time in vain,
Fowler opened the door and looked in. The room was empty.
There were no windows. The door was the only exit, and Fowler
could have sworn Norman had not come out of it.
In a rising panic he ransacked the room, calling futilely. He
went through the rest of the house in a fury of haste and growing
terror. Norman was not in the kitchen or the living room or the
cellar or anywhere in sight outside.
Fowler was on the verge of a nervous collapse when Norman’s
door opened and the missing man emerged, staggering a little,
his face white and blank with exhaustion, and the folder of
papers in his hand.
He slept for three days afterward. And Fowler never again
used that method of keeping his prisoner in check.
After six uneventful months had passed Fowler put Norman to
work on a supplementary device that might augment the Bamaby
magic window. He was receiving reports from a bribed daily
maid, and he took pains to hear all the gossip mutual friends
were happy to pass on. The Bamaby marriage appeared to suffer
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
123
from a higher than normal percentage of spats and disagreements,
but so far it still held. The magic window was not enough.
Norman turned out a little gadget that produced supersonics
guaranteed to evoke irritability and nervous tension. The maid
smuggled it into the apartment. Thereafter, the reports Fowler
received were more satisfactory, from his point of view.
All in all, it took three years.
And the thing that finally turned the trick was the lighting
gadget which Fowler had conceived in that bar interlude when
Veronica first told him about Bamaby.
Norman worked on the fixtures for some time. They were
subtle. The exact tinting involved a careful study of Veronica’s
skin tones, the colors of the apartment, the window placement.
Norman had a scale model of the rooms where the Ramabys
were working out their squabbles toward divorce. He took a long
time to choose just what angles of lighting he would need to
produce the worst possible result. And of course it all had to be
done with considerable care because the existing light fixtures
couldn’t be changed noticeably.
With the help of the maid, the job was finally done. And
thereafter, Veronica in her own home was—ugly.
The lights made her look haggard. They brought out every line
of fatigue and ill-nature that lurked anywhere in her face. They
made her sallow. They caused Bamaby increasingly to wonder
why he had ever thought the girl attractive.
“It’s your fault!’’ Veronica said hysterically. “It’s all your
fault and you know it!’’
“How could it be my fault?’’ Fowler demanded in a smug
voice, trying hard to iron out the smile that kept pulling up the
comers of his mouth.
The television screen was between them like a window. Veron¬
ica leaned toward it, the cords in her neck standing out as she
shouted at him. He had never seen that particular phenomenon
before. Probably she had acquired much practice in angry shout¬
ing in the past three years. There were thin vertical creases
between her brows that were new to him, too. He had seen her
face to face only a few times in the years of her marriage. It had
been safer and pleasanter to create her in the magic window
when he felt the need of seeing her.
This was a different face, almost a different woman. He
wondered briefly if he was watching the effect of his own
disenchanting lighting system, but a glimpse beyond her head of
a crowded drugstore assured him that he was not. This was real,
124 Lewis Padgett
not illusory. This was a Veronica he and Norman had, in effect,
created.
“You did it!” Veronica said accusingly. “I don’t know how,
but you did it.”
Fowler glanced down at the morning paper he had just been
reading, folded back to the gossip column that announced last
night’s spectacular public quarrel between a popular Korys model
and her broker husband.
“What really happened?” Fowler asked mildly.
“None of your business,” Veronica told him with fine illogic.
“You ought to know! You were behind it—you know you were!
You and that half-wit of yours, that Norman. You think I don’t
know? With all those fool inventions you two work out, I know
perfectly well you must have done something —”
“Veronica, you’re raving.”
She was, of course. It was sheer hysteria, plus her normal
conviction that no unpleasant thing that happened to her could
possibly be her own fault. By pure accident she had hit upon the
truth, but that was beside the point.
“Has he left you? Is that it?” Fowler demanded.
She gave him a look of hatred. But she nodded. “It’s your
fault and you’ve got to help me. I need money. I—”
“All right, all right! You’re hysterical, but I’ll help you.
Where are you? I’ll pick you up and we’ll have a drink and talk
things over. You’re better off than you know, baby. He never
was the man for you. You haven’t got a thing to worry about.
I’ll be there in half an hour and we can pick up where we left off
three years ago.”
Part of what he implied was true enough, he reflected as he
switched off the television screen. Curiously, he still meant to
marry her. The changed face with its querulous lines and corded
throat repelled him, but you don’t argue with an obsession. He
had worked three years toward this moment, and he still meant
to marry Veronica Bamaby as he had originally meant to marry
Veronica Wood. Afterward—well, things might be different.
One thing frightened him. She was not quite as stupid as he
had gambled on that day years ago when he had been forced to
call on her for help with Norman. She had seen too much,
deduced too much—remembered much too much. She might be
dangerous. He would have to find out just what she thought she
knew about him and Norman.
It might be necessary to silence her, in one way or another.
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
125
Norman said with painful distinctness: “Must tell you . . .
must —' *
“No, Norman.’’ Fowler spoke hastily. “We have a job to do.
There isn’t time now to discuss—’’
“Can’t work,’’ Norman said. “No . . . must tell you—” He
paused, lifted a shaking hand to his eyes, grimacing against his
own palm with a look of terrible effort and entreaty. The strength
that was mysteriously returning to him at intervals now had made
him almost a human being again. The blankness of his face
flooded sometimes with almost recognizable individuality.
“Not yet, Norman!’’ Fowler heard the alaj^n in his own voice.
“I need you. Later we’ll work out whatever it is you’re trying to
say. Not now. I . . . look, we’ve got to reverse that lighting
system we made for Veronica. I want a set of lights that will
flatter her. I need it in a hurry, Norman. You’ll have to get to
work on it right away.’’
Norman looked at him with hollow eyes. Fowler didn’t like it.
He would not meet the look. He focused on Norman’s forehead
as he repeated his instructions in a patient voice.
Behind that colorless forehead the being that was Norman
must be hammering against its prison walls of bone, striving
hard to escape. Fowler shook off the fanciful idea in distaste,
repeated his orders once more and left the house in some haste.
Veronica would be waiting.
But the look in Norman’s eyes haunted him all the way into
the city. Dark, hollow, desperate. The prisoner in the skull, shut
into a claustrophobic cell out of which no sound could carry. He
was getting dangerously strong, that prisoner. It would be a mercy
in the long run if some task were set to exhaust him, throw him
back into that catatonic state in which he no longer knew he was
in prison.
Veronica was not there. He waited for an hour in the bar.
Then he called her apartment, and got no answer. He tried his
own house, and no one seemed to be there either. With unreason¬
ably mounting uneasiness, he went home at last.
She met him at the door.
“Veronica! I waited for an hour! What’s the idea?’’
She only smiled at him. There was an almost frightening
triumph in the smile, but she did not speak a word.
Fowler pushed past her, fighting his own sinking sensation of
alarm. He called for Norman almost automatically, as if his
unconscious mind recognized before the conscious knew just
what the worst danger might be. For Veronica might be stupid
126
Lewis Padgett
but he had perhaps forgotten how cunning the stupid sometimes
are. Veronica could put two and two together very well. She
could reason from cause to effect quite efficiently, when her own
welfare was at stake.
She had reasoned extremely well today.
Norman lay on the bed in his windowless room, his face as
blank as paper. Some effort of the mind and will had exhausted
him out of all semblance to a rational being. Some new, some
overwhelming task, set him by—Veronica? Not by Fowler. The
job he had been working on an hour ago was no such killing job
as this.
But would Norman obey anyone except Fowler? He had de¬
fied Veronica on that other occasion when she tried to give him
orders. He had almost escaped before Fowler’s commanding
voice ordered him back. Wait, though—she had coaxed him.
Fowler remembered now. She could not command, but she had
coaxed the blank creature into obedience. So there was a way.
And she knew it.
But what had the task been?
With long strides Fowler went back into the drop-shaped
living room. Veronica stood in the doorway where he had left
her. She was waiting.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
She smiled. She said nothing at all.
“What happened?” Fowler cried urgently. “Veronica, answer
me! What did you do?”
“I talked to Norman,” she said. “I . . .got him to do a little
job for me. That was all. Good-by, John.”
“Wait! You can’t leave like that. I’ve got to know what
happened. I—”
“You’ll find out,” Veronica said. She gave him that thin
smile again and then the door closed behind her. He heard her
heels click once or twice on the walk and she was gone. There
was nothing he could do about it.
He didn’t know what she had accomplished. That was the
terrifying thing. She had talked to Norman— And Norman had
been in an almost coherent mood today. If she asked the right
questions, she could have learned—almost anything. About the
magic window and the supersonics and the lighting. About Nor¬
man himself. About—even about a weapon she could use against
Fowler. Norman would make one if he were told to. He was an
automaton. He could not reason; he could only comply.
Perhaps she had a weapon, then. But what? Fowler knew
nothing at all of Veronica’s mind. He had no idea what sort of
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
127
revenge she might take if she had a field as limitless as Norman’s
talents offered her. Fowler had never been interested in Veronica’s
mind at all. He had no idea what sort of being crouched there
behind her forehead as the prisoner crouched behind Norman’s.
He only knew that it would have a thin smile and that it hated
him.
“You’ll find out,*’ Veronica had said. But it was several days
before he did, and even then he could not be sure. So many
things could have been accidental. Although he tried desperately
he could not find Veronica anywhere in the city. But he kept
thinking her eyes were on him, that if he could turn quickly
enough he would catch her staring.
“That’s what makes voodoo magic work,’’ he told himself
savagely. “A man can scare himself to death, once he knows
he’s been threatened—*’
Death, of course, had nothing to do with it. Clearly it was no
part of her plan that her enemy should die—and escape her. She
knew what Fowler would hate most—ridicule.
Perhaps the things that kept happening were accidents. The
time he tripped over nothing and did a foolishly clownish fall for
the amusement of a long line of people waiting before a ticket
window. His ears burned whenever he remembered that. Or the
time he had three embarrassing slips of the tongue in a row when
he was trying to make a good impression on a congressman and
his pompous wife in connection with a patent. Or the time in the
Biltmore dining room when he dropped every dish or glass he
touched, until the whole room was staring at him and the head-
waiter was clearly of two minds about throwing him out.
It was like a perpetual time bomb. He never knew what would
happen next, or when or where. And it was certainly sheer
imagination that made him think he could hear Veronica’s clear,
high, ironic laughter whenever his own body betrayed him into
one of these ridiculous series of slips.
He tried shaking the truth out of Norman.
“What did you do?’’ he demanded of the blank, speechless
face. “What did she make you do? Is there something wrong
with my synapses now? Did you rig up something that would
throw me out of control whenever she wants me to? What did
you do , Norman?"
But Norman could not tell him.
On the third day she televised the house. Fowler went limp
with relief when he saw her features taking shape in the screen.
But before he could speak she said sharply: “All right, John. I
128
Lewis Padgett
only have a minute to waste on you. I just wanted you to know
I’m really going to start to work on you beginning next week.
That’s all, John. Good-by.”
The screen would not make her face form again no matter how
sharply he rapped on it, no matter how furiously he jabbed the
buttons to call her back. After awhile he relaxed limply in his
chair and sat staring blankly at the wall. And now he began to be
afraid—
It had been a long time since Fowler faced a crisis in which he
could not turn to Norman for help. And Norman was no use to
him now. He could not or would not produce a device that
Fowler could use as protection against the nameless threat. He
could give him no inkling of what weapon he had put in Veronica’s
hand.
It might be a bluff. Fowler could not risk it. He had changed a
great deal in three years, far more than he had realized until this
crisis arose. There had been a time when his mind was flexible
enough to assess dangers coolly and resourceful enough to pro¬
duce alternative measures to meet them. But not any more. He
had depended too long on Norman to solve all his problems for
him. Now he was helpless. Unless—
He glanced again at that stunning alternative and then glanced
mentally away, impatient, knowing it for an impossibility. He
had thought of it often in the past week, but of course it couldn’t
be done. Of course—
He got up and went into the windowless room where Norman
sat quietly, staring at nothing. He leaned against the door frame
and looked at Norman. There in that shuttered skull lay a secret
more precious than any miracle Norman had yet produced. The
brain, the mind, the source. The mysterious quirk that brought
forth golden eggs.
“There’s a part of your brain in use that normal brains don’t
have,” Fowler said thoughtfully aloud. Norman did not stir.
“Maybe you’re a freak. Maybe you’re a mutation. But there’s
something like a thermostat in your head. When it’s activated,
your mind’s activated, too. You don’t use the same brain-centers
I do. You’re an idling motor. When the supercharger cuts in
something begins to work along lines of logic I don’t understand.
I see the result, but I don’t know what the method is. If I could
know that—”
He paused and stared piercingly at the bent head. “If I could
only get that secret out of you, Norman! It’s no good to you. But
there isn’t any limit to what / could do with it if I had your secret
and my own brain.”
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
129
If Norman heard he made no motion to show it. But some
impulse suddenly goaded Fowler to action. “I’ll do it!” he
declared. “I’ll try it! What have I got to lose, anyhow? I’m a
prisoner here as long as this goes on, and Norman’s no good to
me the way things stand. It’s worth a try.”
He shook the silent man by the shoulder. “Norman, wake up.
Wake up, wake up, wake up. Norman, do you hear me? Wake
up, Norman, we have work to do.’’
Slowly, out of infinite distances, the prisoner returned to his
cell, crept forward in the bone cage of the skull and looked dully
at Fowler out of deep sockets.
And Fowler was seized with a sudden, immense astonishment
that until now he had never really considered this most obvious
of courses. Norman could do it. He was quite confident of that,
suddenly. Norman could and must do it. This was the point
toward which they had both been moving ever since Norman
first rang the doorbell years ago. It had taken Veronica and a
crisis to make the thing real. But now was the time—time and
past time for the final miracle.
Fowler was going to become sufficient unto himself.
“You’re going to get a nice long rest, Norman,’’ he said
kindly. “You’re going to help me learn to ... to think the way
you think. Do you understand, Norman? Do you know what it is
that makes your brain work the way it does? I want you to help
my brain think that way, too. Afterward, you can rest, Norman.
A nice, long rest. I won’t be needing you any more after that,
Norman.’’
Norman worked for twenty-four hours without a break. Watch¬
ing him, forcing down the rising excitement in his mind, Fowler
thought the blank man too seemed overwrought at this last and
perhaps greatest of all his tasks. He mumbled a good deal over
the intricate wiring of the thing he was twisting together. It
looked rather like a tesseract, an open, interlocking framework
which Norman handled with great care. From time to time he
looked up and seemed to want to talk, to protest. Fowler ordered
him sternly back to his task.
When it was finished it looked a little like the sort of turban a
sultan might wear. It even had a jewel set in the front, like a
headlight, except that this jewel really was light. All the wires
came together there, and out of nowhere the bluish radiance
sprang, shimmering softly in its little nest of wiring just above
the forehead. It made Fowler think of an eye gently opening and
130 Lewis Padgett
closing. A thoughtful eye that looked up at him from between
Norman’s hands.
At the last moment Norman hesitated. His face was gray with
exhaustion as he bent above Fowler, holding out the turban. Like
Charlemagne, Fowler reached impatiently for the thing and set it
on his own head. Norman bent reluctantly to adjust it.
There was a singing moment of anticipation—
The turban was feather-light on his head, but wherever it
touched it made his scalp ache a bit, as if every hair had been
pulled the wrong way. The aching grew. It wasn’t only the hair
that was going the wrong way, he realized suddenly—
It wasn’t only his hair, but his mind—
It wasn’t only—
Out of the wrenching blur that swallowed up the room he saw
Norman’s anxious face take shape, leaning close. He felt the
crown of wire lifted from his head. Through a violent, blinding
ache he watched Norman grimace with bewilderment.
“No,” Norman said. “No . . . wrong . . . you . . . wrong—”
“I’m wrong?” Fowler shook his head a little and the pain
subsided, but not the feeling of singing anticipation, nor the
impatient disappointment at this delay. Any moment now might
bring some interruption, might even bring some new, unguessable
threat from Veronica that could ruin everything.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, schooling himself to patience.
“Me? How am I wrong, Norman? Didn’t anything happen?”
“No. Wrong . . . you —”
“Wait, now.” Fowler had had to help work out problems like
this before. “O.K., I’m wrong. How?” He glanced around the
room. “Wrong room?” he suggested at random. “Wrong chair?
Wrong wiring? Do I have to co-operate somehow?” The last
question seemed to strike a response. “Co-operate how? Do you
need help with the wiring? Do I have to do something after the
helmet’s on?”
“Think!” Norman said violently.
“I have to think?”
“No. Wrong, wrong. Think wrong.”
“I’m thinking wrong?”
Norman made a gesture of despair and turned away toward his
room, carrying the wire turban with him.
Fowler, rubbing his forehead where the wires had pressed,
wondered dizzily what had happened. Think wrong . It didn’t
make sense. He looked at himself in the television screen, which
was a mirror when not in use, fingered the red line of the
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
131
turban's pressure, and murmured, 4 "Thinking, something to do
with thinking. What?” Apparently the turban was designed to
alter his patterns of thought, to open up some dazzling door
through which he could perceive the new causalities that guided
Norman's mind.
He thought that in some way it was probably connected with
that moment when the helmet had seemed to wrench first his hair
and then his skull and then his innermost thoughts in the wrong
direction. But he couldn't work it out. He was too tired. All the
emotional strain of the past days, the menace still hanging over
him, the tremulous excitement of what lay in the immediate
future—no, he couldn't be expected to reason things through
very clearly just now. It was Norman's job. Norman would have
to solve that problem for them both.
Norman did. He came out of his room in a few minutes,
carrying the turban, twisted now into a higher, rounder shape,
the gem of light glowing bluer than before. He approached
Fowler with a firm step.
‘‘You . . thinking wrong,” he said with great distinctness.
“Too ... too old. Can’t change. Think wrong!”
He stared anxiously at Fowler and Fowler stared back, search¬
ing the deep-set eyes for some clue to the meaning hidden in the
locked chambers of the skull behind them.
“Thinking wrong.” Fowler echoed. “Too . . . old? I don’t
understand. Or—do I? You mean my mind isn’t flexible enough
any more?” He remembered the wrenching moment when every
mental process had tried vainly to turn sidewise in his head.
“But then it won't work at all!”
“Oh, yes,” Norman said confidently.
“But if I’m too old—” It wasn’t age, really. Fowler was not
old in years. But the grooves of his thinking had worn them¬
selves deep in the past years since Norman came. He had fixed
inflexibly in the paths of his own self-indulgence and now his
mind could not accept the answer the wire turban offered. “I
can’t change,” he told Norman despairingly. “If I’d only made
you do this when you first came, before my mind set in its
pattern—’’
Norman held out the turban, reversed so that the blue light
bathed his face in blinking radiance. “This—will work,*’ he said
confidently.
Belated caution made Fowler dodge back a little. 4 "Now wait.
I want to know more before we . . . how can it work? You can’t
make me any younger, and I don’t want any random tampering
with my brain. I—”
132
Lewis Padgett
Norman was not listening. With a swift, sure gesture he
pressed the wired wreath down on Fowler’s head.
There was the wrenching of hair and scalp, skull and brain.
This first—and then very swiftly the shadows moved upon the
floor, the sun gleamed for one moment through the eastern
windows and the world darkened outside. The darkness winked
and was purple, was dull red, was daylight—
Fowler could not stir. He tried furiously to snatch the turban
from his head, but no impulse from his brain made any connec¬
tion with the motionless limbs. He still stood facing the mirror,
the blue light still winked thoughtfully back at him, but every¬
thing moved so fast he had no time to comprehend light or dark
for what they were, or the blurred motions reflected in the glass,
or what was happening to him.
This was yesterday, and the week before, and the year before,
but he did not clearly know it. You can*t make me any younger .
Very dimly he remembered having said that to Norman at some
remote interval of time. His thoughts moved sluggishly some¬
where at the very core of his brain, whose outer layers were
being peeled off one by one, hour by hour, day by day. But
Norman could make him younger. Norman was making him
younger. Norman was whisking him back and back toward the
moment when his brain would regain flexibility enough for the
magical turban to open that door to genius.
Those blurs in the mirror were people moving at normal
time-speed—himself, Norman, Veronica going forward in time
as he slipped backward through it, neither perceiving the other.
But twice he saw Norman moving through the room at a speed
that matched his own, walking slowly and looking for something.
He saw him search behind a chair-cushion and pull out a creased
folder, legal size—the folder he had last sent Norman to find, on
that day when he vanished from his closed room!
Norman, then, had traveled in time before. Norman’s powers
must be more far-reaching, more dazzling, than he had ever
guessed. As his own powers would be, when his mind cleared
again and this blinding flicker stopped.
Night and day went by like the flapping of a black wing. That
was the way Wells had put it. That was the way it looked. A
hypnotic flapping. It left him dazed and dull—
Norman, holding the folder, lifted his head and for one instant
looked Fowler in the face in the glass. Then he turned and went
away through time to another meeting in another interval that
would lead backward again to this meeting, and on and on
around a closing spiral which no mind could fully comprehend.
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL
133
It didn’t matter. Only one thing really mattered. Fowler stood
there shocked for an instant into almost total wakefulness, star¬
ing at his own face in the mirror, remembering Norman’s face.
For one timeless moment, while night and day flapped around
him, he stood helpless, motionless, staring appalled at his reflec¬
tion in the gray that was the blending of time—and he knew who
Norman was.
Then mercifully the hypnosis took over again and he knew
nothing at all.
There are centers in the brain never meant for man’s use
today. Not until the race has evolved the strength to handle
them. A man of today might learn the secret that would unlock
those centers, and if he were a fool he might even turn the key
that would let the door swing open.
But after that he would do nothing at all of his own volition.
For modem man is still too weak to handle the terrible energy
that must pour forth to activate those centers. The grossly over¬
loaded physical and mental connections could hold for only a
fraction of a second. Then the energy flooding into the newly
unlocked brain-center never meant for use until perhaps a thou¬
sand more years have remodeled mankind, would collapse the
channels, fuse the connections, make every synapse falter in the
moment when the gates of the mind swing wide.
On Fowler’s head the turban of wires glowed incandescent and
vanished. The thing that had once happened to Norman hap¬
pened now to him. The dazzling revelation—the draining, the
atrophy—
He had recognized Norman’s face reflected in the mirror
beside his own, both white with exhaustion, both stunned and
empty. He knew who Norman was, what motives moved him,
what corroding irony had made his punishing of Norman just.
But by the time he taiew, it was already far too late to alter the
future or the past.
Time flapped its wings more slowly. That moment of times
gone swung round again as the circle came to its close. Memo¬
ries flickered more and more dimly in Fowler’s mind, like day
and night, like the vague, shapeless world which was all he
could perceive now. He felt cold and weak, strangely, intolerably,
inhumanly weak with a weakness of the blood and bone, of the
mind and soul. He saw his surroundings dimly, but he saw—
other things—with a swimming clarity that had no meaning to
him. He saw causes and effects as tangible before him as he had
134 Lewis Padgett
once seen trees and grass. But remote, indifferent, part of an¬
other world.
Help was what he needed. There was something he must
remember. Something of terrible import. He must find help, to
focus his mind upon the things that would work his cure. Cure
was possible; he knew it—he knew it. But he needed help.
Somehow there was a door before him. He reached vaguely,
moving his hand almost by reflex toward his pocket. But he had
no pocket. This was a suit of the new fashion, sleek in fabric,
cut without pockets. He would have to knock, to ring. He
remembered—
The face he had seen in the mirror. His own face? But even
then it had been changing, as a cloud before the sun drains life
and color and soul from a landscape. The expunging amnesia
wiped across its mind had had its parallel physically, too; the
traumatic shock of moving through time —the dark wing flapping —
had sponged the recognizable characteristics from his face, leav¬
ing the matrix, the characterless basic. This was not his face. He
had no face; he had no memory. He knew only that this familiar
door before him was the door to the help he must have to save
himself from a circling eternity.
It was almost wholly a reflex gesture that moved his finger
toward the doorbell. The last dregs of memory and initiative
drained from him with the motion.
Again the chimes played three soft notes. Again the circle
closed.
Again the blank man waited for John Fowler to open the door.
ALIEN EARTH _
by Edmond Hamilton (1904—1977)
Thrilling Wonder Stories , April
Isaac mentions that Edmond Hamilton was known as the
“Universe-saver," but he was also known to “wreck" a few
in his day. Indeed, he was (and is, thank goodness) so well
known for his space opera that his fine work in other areas of
science fiction is not nearly as famous as it ought to be.
“Alien Earth" is an excellent example of this relative
obscurity, a wonderful, moody story that is science fiction at
its finest. Amazingly, it has only been reprinted twice—in The
Best of Edmond Hamilton (1977) and in the anthology Alien
Earth and Other Stories (1969). It is a pleasure to reprint it
again. — M.H.G.
(There are “great dyings" in the course of biological
evolution, periods when in a comparatively short interval of
time, a large fraction of the species of living things on Earth
die. The most recent example was the period at the end of the
Cretaceous, 65,000,000 years ago.
I have often thought there are also “great dyings" in the
history of science fiction, periods when large percentages of
the established science fiction writers stopped appearing. The
most dramatic example came in 1938, when John Campbell
became editor of Astounding and introduced an entirely new
stable of writers, replacing the old.
Some old-timers survived, of course (even as some species
always survived the biological “great dyings"). To me, one
of the most remarkable survivors was Edmond Hamilton. He
was one of the great stars of the pre-Campbell era, so
grandiose in his plots that he was known as the “Universe-
saver." And yet he was able to narrow his focus and survive,
135
136
Edmond Hamilton
whereas many others who seemed to require a smaller re¬
adaptation could not do so. In “Alien Earth ” there is no
Universe being saved; there is only a close look at the world
of plants.—I.A.)
CHAPTER 1
Slowed-down Life
The dead man was standing in a little moonlit clearing in the
jungle when Farris found him.
He was a small swart man in white cotton, a typical Laos
tribesman of this Indo-China hinterland. He stood without support,
eyes open, staring unwinkingly ahead, one foot slightly raised.
And he was not breathing.
“But he can’t be dead!” Farris exclaimed. “Dead men don’t
stand around in the jungle.*’
He was interrupted by Piang, his guide. That cocksure little
Annamese had been losing his impudent self-sufficiency ever
since they had wandered off the trail. And the motionless,
standing dead man had completed his demoralization.
Ever since the two of them had stumbled into this grove of
silk-cotton trees and almost run into the dead man, Piang had
been goggling in a scared way at the still unmoving figure. Now
he burst out volubly:
“The man is hunati! Don’t touch him! We must leave here—we
have strayed into a bad part of the jungle!’’
Farris didn’t budge. He had been a teak-hunter for too many
years to be entirely skeptical of the superstitions of Southeast
Asia. But, on the other hand, he felt a certain responsibility.
“If this man isn’t really dead, then he’s in bad shape some¬
how and needs help,’’ he declared.
“No, no!’* Piang insisted. “He is hunati! Let us leave here
quickly!’’
Pale with fright, he looked around the moonlit grove. They
were on a low plateau where the jungle was monsoon-forest
rather than rain-forest. The big silk-cotton and ficus trees were
less choked with brush and creepers here, and they could see
along dim forest aisles to gigantic distant banyans that loomed
like dark lords of the silver silence.
Silence. There was too much of it to be quite natural. They
could faintly hear the usual clatter of birds and monkeys from
down in the lowland thickets, and the cough of a tiger echoed
ALIEN EARTH
137
from the Laos foothills. But the thick forest here on the plateau
was hushed.
Farris went to the motionless, staring tribesman and gently
touched his thin brown wrist. For a few moments, he felt no
pulse. Then he caught its throb—an incredibly slow beating.
‘‘About one beat every two minutes,” Farris muttered. ‘‘How
the devil can he keep living?”
He watched the man's bare chest. It rose—but so slowly that his
eye could hardly detect the motion. It remained expanded for
minutes. Then, as slowly, it fell again.
He took his pocket-light and flashed it into the tribesman's
eyes.
There was no reaction to the light, not at first. Then' slowly,
the eyelids crept down and closed, and stayed closed, and finally
crept open again.
‘‘A wink—but a hundred times slower than normal!” Farris
exclaimed. ‘‘Pulse, respiration, reactions—they’re all a hundred
times slower. The man has either suffered a shock, or been
drugged.”
Then he noticed something that gave him a little chill.
The tribesman’s eyeball seemed to be turning with infinite
slowness toward him. And the man’s raised foot was a little
higher now. As though he were walking—but walking at a pace
a hundred times slower than normal.
The thing was eery. There came something more eery. A
sound—the sound of a small stick cracking.
Piang exhaled breath in a sound of pure fright, and pointed off
into the grove. In the moonlight Farris saw.
There was another tribesman standing a hundred feet away.
He, too, was motionless. But his body was bent forward in the
attitude of a runner suddenly frozen. And beneath his foot, the
stick had cracked.
‘‘They worship the great ones, by the Change!” said the
Annamese in a hoarse undertone. “We must not interfere!”
That decided Farris. He had, apparently, stumbled on some
sort of weird jungle rite. And he had had too much experience
with Asiatic natives to want to blunder into their private religious
mysteries.
His business here in easternmost Indo-China was teak-hunting.
It would be difficult enough back in this wild hinterland without
antagonizing the tribes. These strangely dead-alive men, what¬
ever drug or compulsion they were suffering from, could not be
in danger if others were near.
138
Edmond Hamilton
“We’ll go on,’’ Farris said shortly.
Piang led hastily down the slope of the forested plateau. He
went through the brush like a scared deer, till they hit the trail
again.
“This is it—the path to the Government station,” he said, in
great relief. “We must have lost it back at the ravine. I have not
been this far back in Laos, many times.”
Farris asked, “Piang, what is hunati? This Change that you
were talking about?”
The guide became instantly less voluble. “It is a rite of
worship.” He added, with some return of his cocksureness,
“These tribesmen are very ignorant. They have not been to
mission school, as I have.”
“Worship of what?” Farris asked. “The great ones, you said.
Who are they?”
Piang shrugged and lied readily. “I do not know. In all the
great forest, there are men who can become hunati , it is said.
How, I do not know.”
Farris pondered, as he tramped onward. There had been some¬
thing uncanny about those tribesmen. It had been almost a
suspension of animation—but not quite. Only an incredible slow¬
ing down.
What could have caused it? And what, possibly, could be the
purpose of it?
“I should think,” he said, “that a tiger or snake would make
short work of a man in that frozen condition.”
Piang shook his head vigorously. “No. A man who is hunati
is safe—at least, from beasts. No beast would touch him.”
Farris wondered. Was that because the extreme motionlessness
made the beasts ignore them? He supposed that it was some kind
of fear-ridden nature-worship. Such animistic beliefs were com¬
mon in this part of the world. And it was small wonder, Farris
thought a little grimly. Nature, here in the tropical forest, wasn’t
the smiling goddess of temperate lands. It was something, not to
be loved, but to be feared.
He ought to know! He had had two days of the Laos jungle
since leaving the upper Mekong, when he had expected that one
would take him to the French Government botanic survey station
that was his goal.
He brushed stinging winged ants from his sweating neck, and
wished that they had stopped at sunset. But the map had showed
them but a few miles from the Station. He had not counted on
ALIEN EARTH
139
Piang losing the trail. But he should have, for it was only a
wretched track that wound along the forested slope of the plateau.
The hundred-foot ficus, dye wood and silk-cotton trees smoth¬
ered the moonlight. The track twisted constantly to avoid impene¬
trable bamboo-hells or to ford small streams, and the tangle of
creepers and vines had a devilish deftness at tripping one in the
dark.
Farris wondered if they had lost their way again. And he
wondered not for the first time, why he had ever left America to
go into teak.
“That is the Station,” said Piang suddenly, in obvious relief.
Just ahead of them on the jungled slope was a flat ledge. Light
shone there, from the windows of a rambling bamboo bungalow.
Farris became conscious of all his accumulated weariness, as
he went the last few yards. He wondered whether he could get a
decent bed here, and what kind of chap this Berreau might be
who had chosen to bury himself in such a Godforsaken post of
the botanical survey.
The bamboo house was surrounded by tall, graceful dye woods.
But the moonlight showed a garden around it, enclosed by a low
sappan hedge.
A voice from the dark veranda reached Farris and startled him.
It startled him because it was a girl’s voice, speaking in French.
“Please, Andre! Don’t go again! It is madness!”
A man’s voice rapped harsh answer, “ Lys , tais-toi! Je
reviendrai —' ’
Farris coughed diplomatically and then said up to the darkness
of the veranda, “Monsieur Berreau?”
There was a dead silence. Then the door of the house was
swung open so that light spilled out on Farris and his guide.
By the light, Farris saw a man of thirty, bareheaded, in
whites—a thin, rigid figure. The girl was only a white blur in the
gloom.
He climbed the steps. “I suppose you don’t get many visitors.
My name is Hugh Farris. I have a letter for you, from the Bureau
at Saigon.”
There was a pause. Then, “If you will come inside, M’sieu
Farris—”
In the lamplit, bamboo-walled living room, Farris glanced
quickly at the two.
Berreau looked to his experienced eye like a man who had
stayed too long in the tropics—his blond handsomeness tarnished
by a corroding climate, his eyes too feverishly restless.
“My sister, Lys,” he said, as he took the letter Farris handed.
140
Edmond Hamilton
Fanis’ surprise increased. A wife, he had supposed until now.
Why should a girl under thirty bury herself in this wilderness?
He wasn’t surprised that she looked unhappy. She might have
been a decently pretty girl, he thought, if she didn’t have that
woebegone anxious look.
“Will you have a drink?’’ she asked him. And then, glancing
with swift anxiety at her brother, “You’ll not be going now,
Andre?’’
Berreau looked out at the moonlit forest, and a queer, hungry
tautness showed his cheekbones in a way Farris didn’t like. But
the Frenchman turned back.
“No, Lys. And drinks, please. Then tell Ahra to care for his
guide.’’
He read the letter swiftly, as Farris sank with a sigh into a
rattan chair. He looked up from it with troubled eyes.
“So you come for teak?’’
Farris nodded. “Only to spot and girdle trees. They have to
stand a few years then before cutting, you know.’’
Berreau said, “The Commissioner writes that I am to give you
every assistance. He explains the necessity of opening up new
teak cuttings.’’
He slowly folded the letter. It was obvious, Farris thought,
that the man did not like it, but had to make the best of orders.
“I shall do everything possible to help,’’ Berreau promised.
“You’ll want a native crew, I suppose. I can get one for you.’’
Then a queer look Filmed his eyes. “But there are some forests
here that are impracticable for lumbering. I’ll go into that later.’’
Farris, feeling every moment more exhausted by the long
tramp, was grateful for the rum and soda Lys handed him.
“We have a small extra room—I think it will be comfortable,’’
she murmured.
He thanked her. “I could sleep on a log, I’m so tired. My
muscles are as stiff as though I were hunati myself.’’
Berreau’s glass dropped with a sudden crash.
CHAPTER 2
Sorcery of Science
Ignoring the shattered glass, the young Frenchman strode
quickly toward Farris.
“What do you know of huanti?" he asked harshly.
Farris saw with astonishment that the man’s hands were shaking.
ALIEN EARTH
141
“I don’t know anything except what we saw in the forest. We
came upon a man standing in the moonlight who looked dead,
and wasn’t. He just seemed incredibly slowed down. Piang said
he was hunati
A flash crossed Berreau’s eyes. He exclaimed, “I knew the
Rite would be called! And the others are there—”
He checked himself. It was as though the unaccustomedness
of strangers had made him for a moment forget Farris’ presence.
Lys* blonde head drooped. She looked away from Farris.
“You were saying?’’ the American prompted.
But Berreau had tightened up. He chose his words now. “The
Laos tribes have some queer beliefs, M’sieu Farris. They’re a
little hard to understand.’’
Farris shrugged. “I’ve seen some queer Asian witchcraft, in
my time. But this is unbelievable!’’
“It is science, not witchcraft,’’ Berreau corrected. “Primitive
science, bom long ago and transmitted by tradition. That man
you saw in the forest was under the influence of a chemical not
found in our pharmacopeia, but nonetheless potent.’’
“You mean that these tribesmen have a drug that can slow the
life-process to that incredibly slow tempo?’’ Farris asked
skeptically. “One that modem science doesn’t know about?’’
“Is that so strange? Remember, M’sieu Farris, that a century
ago an old peasant woman in England was curing heart-disease
with foxglove, before a physician studied her cure and discov¬
ered digitalis.’’
“But why on earth would even a Laos tribesman want to live
so much slower?” Farris demanded.
“Because,’’ Berreau answered, “they believe that in that state
they can commune with something vastly greater than themselves. ’’
Lys interrupted. “M’sieu Farris must be very weary. And his
bed is ready.*’
Farris saw the nervous fear in her face, and realized that she
wanted to end this conversation.
He wondered about Berreau, before he dropped off to sleep.
There was something odd about the chap. He had been too
excited about this hunati business.
Yet that was weird enough to upset anyone, that incredible
and uncanny slowing-down of a human being’s life-tempo. “To
commune with something vastly greater than themselves,’’ Berreau
had said.
What gods were so strange that a man must live a hundred
times slower than normal, to commune with them?
142
Edmond Hamilton
Next morning, he breakfasted with Lys on the broad veranda.
The girl told him that her brother had already gone out.
‘ ‘He will take you later today to the tribal village down in the
valley, to arrange for your workers,” she said.
Farris noted the faint unhappiness still in her face. She looked
silently at the great, green ocean of forest that stretched away
below this plateau on whose slope they were.
“You don’t like the forest?” he ventured.
“I hate it,” she said. “It smothers one, here.”
Why, he asked, didn’t she leave? The girl shrugged.
“1 shall, soon. It is useless to stay. Andre will not go back
with me.”
She explained. “He has been here five years too long. When
he didn’t return to France, I came out to bring him. But he won’t
go. He has ties here now.”
Again, she became abrupdy silent. Farris discreetly refrained
from asking her what ties she meant. There might be an Anna-
mese woman in the background—though Berreau didn’t look that
type.
The day settled down to the job of being stickily tropical, and
the hot still hours of the morning wore on. Farris, sprawling in a
chair and getting a welcome rest, waited for Berreau to return.
He didn’t return. And as the afternoon waned, Lys looked
more and more worried.
An hour before sunset, she came out onto the veranda, dressed in
slacks and jacket.
“I am going down to the village—I’ll be back soon,” she told
Farris.
She was a poor liar. Farris got to his feet. “You’re going after
your brother. Where is he?”
Distress and doubt struggled in her face. She remained silent.
“Believe me, I want to be a friend,” Farris said quietly.
“Your brother is mixed up in something here, isn’t he?”
She nodded, white-faced. “It’s why he wouldn’t go back to
France with me. He can’t bring himself to leave. It’s like a
horrible fascinating vice.”
“What is?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you. Please wait here.”
He watched her leave, and then realized she was not going
down the slope but up it—up toward the top of the forested
plateau.
He caught up to her in quick strides. “You can’t go up into
that forest alone, in a blind search for him.”
ALIEN EARTH
143
“It’s not a blind search. I think I know where he is,” Lys
whispered. “But you should not go there. The tribesmen wouldn’t
like it!”
Farris instantly understood. “That big grove up on top of the
plateau, where we found the hunati natives?”
Her unhappy silence was answer enough. “Go back to the
bungalow,” he told her. “I’ll find him.”
She would not do that. Farris shrugged, and started forward.
“Then we’ll go together.”
She hesitated, then came on. They went up the slope of the
plateau, through the forest.
The westering sun sent spears and arrows of burning gold
through chinks in the vast canopy of foliage under which they
walked. The solid green of the forest breathed a rank, hot
exhalation. Even the birds and monkeys were stifledly quiet at
this hour.
“Is Berreau mixed up in that queer hunati rite?” Farris asked.
Lys looked up as though to utter a quick denial, but then
dropped her eyes.
“Yes, in a way. His passion for botany got him interested in
it. Now he’s involved.”
Farris was puzzled. “Why should botanical interest draw a
man to that crazy drug-rite or whatever it is?”
She wouldn’t answer that. She walked in silence until they
reached the top of the forested plateau. Then she spoke in a
whisper.
“We must be quiet now. It will be bad if we are seen here.”
The grove that covered the plateau was pierced by horizontal
bars of red sunset light. The great silk-cottons and ficus trees
were pillars supporting a vast cathedral-nave of darkening green.
A little way ahead loomed up those huge, monster banyans he
had glimpsed before in the moonlight. They dwarfed all the rest,
towering bulks that were infinitely ancient and infinitely majestic.
Farris suddenly saw a Laos tribesman, a small brown figure,
in the brush ten yards ahead of him. There were two others, farther
in the distance. And they were all standing quite still, facing
away from him.
They were hunati , he knew. In that queer state of slowed-
down life, that incredible retardation of the vital processes.
Farris felt a chill. He muttered over his shoulder, “You had
better go back down and wait.”
“No,” she whispered. “There is Andre.”
He turned, startled. Then he too saw Berreau.
His blond head bare, his face set and white and masklike.
144
Edmond Hamilton
standing frozenly beneath a big wild-fig a hundred feet to the
right.
Hunati!
Farris had expected it, but that didn’t make it less shocking. It
wasn’t that the tribesmen mattered less as human beings. It was
just that he had talked with a normal Berreau only a few hours
before. And now, to see him like this!
Berreau stood in a position ludicrously reminiscent of the
old-time “living statues.’’ One foot was slightly raised, his body
bent a little forward, his arms raised a little.
Like the frozen tribesmen ahead, Berreau was facing toward the
inner recesses of the grove, where the giant banyans loomed.
Farris touched his arm. “Berreau, you have to snap out of
this.’’
“It’s no use to speak to him,’’ whispered the girl. “He can’t
hear.’’
No, he couldn’t hear. He was living at a tempo so low that no
ordinary sound could make sense to his ears. His face was a rigid
mask, lips slightly parted to breathe, eyes fixed ahead. Slowly,
slowly, the lids crept down and veiled those staring eyes and
then crept open again in the infinitely slow wink. Slowly, slowly,
his slightly raised left foot moved down toward the ground.
Movement, pulse, breathing—all a hundred times slower than
normal. Living, but not in a human way—not in a human way at
all.
Lys was not so stunned as Farris was. He realized later that
she must have seen her brother like this, before.
“We must take him back to the bungalow, somehow,’’ she
murmured. “I can't let him stay out here for many days and
nights, again!**
Farris welcomed the small practical problem that took his
thoughts for a moment away from this frozen, standing horror.
“We can rig a stretcher, from our jackets,’’ he said. “I’ll cut
a couple of poles/’
The two bamboos, through the sleeves of the two jackets,
made a makeshift stretcher which they laid upon the ground.
Farris lifted Berreau. The man’s body was rigid, muscles
locked in an effort no less strong because it was infinitely slow.
He got the young Frenchman down on the stretcher, and then
looked at the girl. “Can you help carry him? Or will you get a
native?’’
She shook her head. “The tribesmen mustn’t know of this.
Andre isn’t heavy.’’
ALIEN EARTH
145
He wasn’t. He was light as though wasted by fever, though
the sickened Farris knew that it wasn’t any fever that had done
it.
Why should a civilized young botanist go out into the forest
and partake of a filthy primitive drug of some kind that slowed
him down to a frozen stupor? It didn’t make sense.
Lys bore her share of their living burden through the gathering
twilight, in stolid silence. Even when they put Berreau down at
intervals to rest, she did not speak.
It was not until they reached the dark bungalow and had put
him down on his bed, that the girl sank into a chair and buried
her face in her hands.
Farris spoke with a rough encouragement he did not feel.
“Don’t get upset. He’ll be all right now. I’ll soon bring him out
of this.’’
She shook her head. “No, you must not attempt that! He must
come out of it by himself. And it will take many days.’’
The devil it would, Farris thought. He had teak to find, and he
needed Berreau to arrange for workers.
Then the dejection of the girl’s small figure got him. He patted
her shoulder.
“All right, I’ll help you take care of him. And together, we’ll
pound some sense into him and make him go back home. Now
you see about dinner.’’
She lit a gasoline lamp, and went out. He heard her calling the
servants.
He looked down at Berreau. He felt a little sick, again. The
Frenchman lay, eyes staring toward the ceiling. He was living,
breathing—and yet his retarded life-tempo cut him off from
Farris as effectually as death would.
No, not quite. Slowly, so slowly that he could hardly detect
the movement, Berreau’s eyes turned toward Farris’ figure.
Lys came back into the room. She was quiet, but he was
getting to know her better, and he knew by her face that she was
startled.
“The servants are gone! Ahra, and the girls—and your guide.
They must have seen us bring Andre in.’’
Farris understood. “They left because we brought back a man
who’s hunati?”
She nodded. “All the tribespeople fear the rite. It’s said
there’s only a few who belong to it, but they’re dreaded.’’
Farris spared a moment to curse softly the vanished Annamese.
“Piang would bolt like a scared rabbit, from something like this.
A sweet beginning for my job here.’’
146
Edmond Hamilton
“Perhaps you had better leave,” Lys said uncertainly. Then
she added contradictorily, “No, I can’t be heroic about it! Please
stay!”
“That’s for sure,” he told her. “I can’t go back down river
and report that I shirked my job because of—”
He stopped, for she wasn’t listening to him. She was looking
past him, toward the bed.
Farris swung around. While they two had been talking, Berreau
had been moving. Infinitely slowly—but moving.
His feet were on the floor now. He was getting up. His body
straightened with a painful, dragging slowness, for many minutes.
Then his right foot began to rise almost imperceptibly from the
floor. He was starting to walk, only a hundred times slower than
normal.
He was starting to walk toward the door.
Lys’ eyes had a yearning pity in them. “He is trying to go
back up to the forest. He will try so long as he is hunati .”
Farris gently lifted Berreau back to the bed. He felt a cold
dampness on his forehead.
What was there up there that drew worshippers in a strange
trance of slowed-down life?
CHAPTER 3
Unholy Lure
He turned to the girl and asked, “How long will he stay in this
condition?”
“A long time,” she answered heavily. “It may take weeks for
the hunati to wear off. ’ *
Farris didn’t like the prospect, but there was nothing he could
do about it.
“All right, we’ll take care of him. You and I.”
Lys said, “One of us will have to watch him, all the time. He
will keep trying to go back to the forest.”
“You’ve had enough for a while,” Farris told her. “I’ll watch
him tonight.”
Farris watched. Not only that night but for many nights. The
days went into weeks, and the natives still shunned the house,
and he saw nobody except the pale girl and the man who was
living in a different way than other humans lived.
Berreau didn’t change. He didn’t seem to sleep, nor did he
ALIEN EARTH
147
seem to need food or drink. His eyes never closed, except in that
infinitely slow blinking.
He didn't sleep, and he did not quit moving. He was always
moving, only it was in that weird, utterly slow-motion tempo
that one could hardly see.
Lys had been right. Berreau wanted to go back to the forest.
He might be living a hundred times slower than normal, but he
was obviously still conscious in some weird way, and still trying
to go back to the hushed, forbidden forest up there where they
had found him.
Farris wearied of lifting the statue-like figure back into bed,
and with the girl's permission tied Berreau's ankles. It did not
make things much better. It was even more upsetting, in a way,
to sit in the lamplit bedroom and watch Berreau's slow struggles
for freedom.
The dragging slowness of each tiny movement made Farris’
nerves twitch to see. He wished he could give Berreau some
sedative to keep him asleep, but he did not dare to do that.
He had found, on Berreau’s forearm, a tiny incision stained
with sticky green. There were scars of other, old incisions near
it. Whatever crazy drug had been injected into the man to make
him hunati was unknown. Farris did not dare try to counteract its
effect.
Finally, Farris glanced up one night from his bored perusal of
an old L'Illustration and then jumped to his feet.
Berreau still lay on the bed, but he had just winked. Had
winked with normal quickness, and not that slow, dragging
blink.
“Berreau!” Farris said quickly. “Are you all right now? Can
you hear me?”
Berreau looked up at him with a level, unfriendly gaze. “I can
hear you. May I ask why you meddled?”
It took Farris aback. He had been playing nurse so long that he
had unconsciously come to think of the other as a sick man who
would be grateful to him. He realized now that Berreau was
coldly angry, not grateful.
The Frenchman was untying his ankles. His movements were
shaky, his hands trembling, but he stood up normally.
“Well?” he asked.
Farris shrugged. “Your sister was going up there after you. I
helped her bring you back. That’s all.”
Berreau looked a little startled. “Lys did that? But it’s a
breaking of the Rite! It can mean trouble for her!”
Resentment and raw nerves made Farris suddenly brutal. “Why
148
Edmond Hamilton
should you worry about Lys now, when you’ve made her wretched
for months by your dabbing in native wizardries?”
Berreau didn’t retort angrily, as he had expected. The young
Frenchman answered heavily.
“It’s true. I’ve done that to Lys.”
Farris exclaimed, “Berreau, why do you do it? Why this
unholy business of going hunati , of living a hundred times
slower? What can you gain by it?”
The other man looked at him with haggard eyes. “By doing it.
I’ve entered an alien world. A world that exists around us all our
lives, but that we never live in or understand at all.”
“What world?”
“The world of green leaf and root and branch,” Berreau
answered. “The world of plant life, which we can never compre¬
hend because of the difference between its life-tempo and our
life-tempo.”
Farris began dimly to understand. “You mean, this hunati change
makes you live at the same tempo as plants?”
Berreau nodded. “Yes. And that simple difference in life-
tempo is the doorway into an unknown, incredible world.”
“But how?”
The Frenchman pointed to the half-healed incision on his bare
arm. “The drug does it. A native drug, that slows down
metabolism, heart-action, respiration, nerve-messages, everything.
“Chlorophyll is its basis. The green blood of plant-life, the
complex chemical that enables plants to take their energy direct
from sunlight. The natives prepare it directly from grasses, by
some method of their own.”
“I shouldn’t think,” Farris said incredulously, “that chloro¬
phyll could have any effect on an animal organism.”
“Your saying that,” Berreau retorted, “shows that your bio¬
chemical knowledge is out of date. Back in March of Nineteen
Forty-Eight, two Chicago chemists engaged in mass production
or extraction of chlorophyll, announced that their injection of it
into dogs and rats seemed to prolong life greatly by altering the
oxidation capacity of the cells.
“Prolong life greatly—yes! But it prolongs it, by slowing it
down! A tree lives longer than a man, because it doesn’t live so
fast. You can make a man live as long —and as slowly —as a
tree, by injecting the right chlorophyll compound into his blood.”
Farris said, “That’s what you meant, by saying that primitive
peoples sometimes anticipate modem scientific discoveries?”
Berreau nodded. “This chlorophyll hunati solution may be an
ALIEN EARTH
149
age-old secret. I believe it’s always been known to a few among
the primitive forest-folk of the world.”
He looked somberly past the American. “Tree-worship is as
old as the human race. The Sacred Tree of Sumeria, the groves
of Dodona, the oaks of the Druids, the tree Ygdrasil of the
Norse, even our own Christmas Tree—they all stem from primi¬
tive worship of that other, alien kind of life with which we share
Earth.
“I think that a few secret worshippers have always known
how to prepare the chlorophyll drug that enabled them to attain
complete communion with that other kind of life, by living at the
same slow rate for a time.”
Farris stared. “But how did you get taken into this queer
secret worship?”
The other man shrugged. “The worshippers were grateful to
me, because I had saved the forests here from possible death.”
He walked across to the comer of the room that was fitted as a
botanical laboratory, and took down a test-tube. It was filled
with dusty, tiny spores of a leprous, gray-green color.
“This is the Burmese Blight, that’s withered whole great
forests down south of the Mekong. A deadly thing, to tropical
trees. It was starting to work up into this Laos country, but I
showed the tribes how to stop it. The secret hunati sect made me
one of them, in reward.”
“But I still can’t understand why an educated man like you
would want to join such a crazy mumbo-jumbo,” Farris said.
“ Dieu, I’m trying to make you understand why! To show you
that it was my curiosity as a botanist that made me join the Rite
and take the drug!”
Berreau mshed on. “But you can’t understand, any more than
Lys could! You can’t comprehend the wonder and strangeness
and beauty of living that other kind of life!”
Something in Berreau’s white, rapt face, in his haunted eyes,
made Farris’ skin crawl. His words seemed momentarily to lift a
veil, to make the familiar vaguely strange and terrifying.
“Berreau, listen! You’ve got to cut this and leave here at once.”
The Frenchman smiled mirthlessly. “I know. Many times, I
have told myself so. But I do not go. How can I leave something
that is a botanist’s heaven?”
Lys had come into the room, was looking wanly at her brother’s
face.
“Andre, won’t you give it up and go home with me?” she
appealed.
150
Edmond Hamilton
"Or are you too sunken in this uncanny habit to care whether
your sister breaks her heart?" Farris demanded.
Berreau flared. "You’re a smug pair! You treat me like a drug
addict, without knowing the wonder of the experience I’ve had!
I’ve gone into another world, an alien Earth that is around us
every day of our lives and that we can’t even see. And I’m going
back again, and again."
"Use that chlorophyll drug and go hunati again?" Farris said
grimly.
Berreau nodded defiantly.
"No," said Farris. "You’re not. For if you do, we’ll just go
out there and bring you in again. You’ll be quite helpless to
prevent us, once you’re hunati.**
The other man raged. "There’s a way I can stop you from
doing that! Your threats are dangerous!"
"There’s no way," Farris said flatly. "Once you’ve frozen
yourself into that slower life-tempo, you’re helpless against nor¬
mal people. And I’m not threatening. I’m trying to save your
sanity, man!"
Berreau flung out of the room without answer. Lys looked at
the American, with tears glimmering in her eyes.
"Don’t worry about it," he reassured her. "He’ll get over it,
in time."
"I fear not," the girl whispered. "It has become a madness in
his brain."
Inwardly, Farris agreed. Whatever the lure of the unknown
world that Berreau had entered by that change in life-tempo, it
had caught him beyond all redemption.
A chill swept Farris when he thought of it—men out there, living
at the same tempo as plants, stepping clear out of the plane of
animal life to a strangely different kind of life and world.
The bungalow was oppressively silent that day—the servants
gone, Berreau sulking in his laboratory, Lys moving about with
misery in her eyes.
But Berreau didn’t try to go out, though Farris had been
expecting that and had been prepared for a clash. And by evening,
Berreau seemed to have got over his sulks. He helped prepare
dinner.
He was almost gay, at the meal—a febrile good humor that
Farris didn’t quite like. By common consent, none of the three
spoke of what was uppermost in their minds.
Berreau retired, and Farris told Lys, "Go to bed—you’ve lost
so much sleep lately you’re half asleep now. I’ll keep watch."
In his own room, Farris found drowsiness assailing him too.
ALIEN EARTH
151
He sank back in a chair, fighting the heaviness that weighed
down his eyelids.
Then, suddenly, he understood. “Drugged!” he exclaimed,
and found his voice little more than a whisper. “Something in
the dinner!”
“Yes,” said a remote voice. “Yes, Farris.”
Berreau had come in. He loomed gigantic to Farris 1 blurred
eyes. He came closer, and Farris saw in his hand a needle that
dripped sticky green.
“I’m sorry, Farris.” He was rolling up Farris’ sleeve, and
Farris could not resist. “I’m sorry to do this to you and Lys. But
you would interfere. And this is the only way I can keep you
from bringing me back.”
Farris felt the sting of the needle. He felt nothing more, before
drugged unconsciousness claimed him.
CHAPTER 4
Incredible World
Farris awoke, and for a dazed moment wondered what it was that
so bewildered him. Then he realized.
It was the daylight. It came and went, every few minutes.
There was the darkness of night in the bedroom, and then a
sudden burst of dawn, a little period of brilliant sunlight, and
then night again.
It came and went, as he watched numbly, like the slow, steady
beating of a great pulse—a systole and diastole of light and
darkness.
Days shortened to minutes? But how could that be? And then,
as he awakened fully, he remembered.
“ Hunati! He injected the chlorophyll drug into my blood¬
stream!”
Yes. He was hunati, now. Living at a tempo a hundred times
slower than normal.
And that was why day and night seemed a hundred times
faster than normal, to him. He had, already, lived through
several days!
Farris stumbled to his feet. As he did so, he knocked his pipe
from the arm of the chair.
It did not fall to the floor. It just disappeared instantly, and the
next instant was lying on the floor.
“It fell. But it fell so fast I couldn’t see it.”
152
Edmond Hamilton
Farris felt his brain reel to the impact of the unearthly. He
found that he was trembling violently.
He fought to get a grip on himself. This wasn’t witchcraft. It
was a secret and devilish science, but it wasn’t supernatural.
He, himself, felt as normal as ever. It was his surroundings,
the swift rush of day and night especially, that alone told him he
was changed.
He heard a scream, and stumbled out to the living-room of the
bungalow. Lys came running toward him.
She still wore her jacket and slacks, having obviously been too
worried about her brother to retire completely. And there was
terror in her face.
“What’s happened?’’ she cried. “The light—*’
He took her by the shoulders. “Lys, don’t lose your nerve.
What’s happened is that we’re hunati now. Your brother did
it—drugged us at dinner, then injected the chlorophyll compound
into us.’’
“But why?’’ she cried.
“Don’t you see? He was going hunati himself again, going
back up to the forest. And we could easily overtake and bring
him back, if we remained normal. So he changed us too, to
prevent that.’*
Farris went into Berreau’s room. It was as he had expected.
The Frenchman was gone.
“I’ll go after him,’’ he said tightly. “He’s got to come back,
for he may have an antidote to that hellish stuff. You wait here.*’
Lys clung to him. “No! I’d go mad, here by myself, like
this.’’
She was, he saw, on the brink of hysterics. He didn’t wonder.
The slow, pulsing beat of day and night alone was enough to
unseat one’s reason.
He acceded. “All right. But wait till I get something.’’
He went back to Berreau’s room and took a big bolo-knife he
had seen leaning in a comer. Then he saw something else,
something glittering in the pulsing light, on the botanist’s
laboratory-table.
Farris stuffed that into his pocket. If force couldn’t bring
Berreau back, the threat of this other thing might influence him.
He and Lys hurried out onto the veranda and down the steps.
And then they stopped, appalled.
The great forest that loomed before them was now a nightmare
sight. It seethed and stirred with unearthly life—great branches
clawing and whipping at each other as they fought for the light,
ALIEN EARTH
153
vines writhing through them at incredible speed, a rustling up¬
roar of tossing, living plant-life.
Lys shrank back. “The forest is alive now!”
“It’s just the same as always,” Farris reassured. “It’s we who
have changed—who are living so slowly now that the plants
seem to live faster. ’ ’
“And Andre is out in that!” Lys shuddered. Then courage
came back into her pale face. “But I’m not afraid.”
They started up through the forest toward the plateau of giant
trees. And now there was an awful unreality about this incredible
world.
Farris felt no difference in himself. There was no sensation of
slowing down. His own motions and perceptions appeared normal.
It was simply that all around him the vegetation had now a
savage motility that was animal in its swiftness.
Grasses sprang up beneath his feet, tiny green spears climbing
toward the light. Buds swelled, burst, spread their bright petals
on the air, breathed out their fragrance—and died.
New leaves leaped joyously up from every twig, lived out
their brief and vital moment, withered and fell. The forest was a
constantly shifting kaleidoscope of colors, from pale green to
yellowed brown, that rippled as the swift tides of growth and
death washed over it.
But it was not peaceful nor serene, that life of the forest.
Before, it had seemed to Farris that the plants of the earth existed
in a placid inertia utterly different from the beasts, who must
constantly hunt or be hunted. Now he saw how mistaken he had
been.
Close by, a tropical nettle crawled up beside a giant fern.
Octopus-like, its tendrils flashed around and through the plant.
The fern writhed. Its fronds tossed wildly, its stalks strove to be
free. But the stinging death conquered it.
Lianas crawled like great serpents among the trees, encircling
the trunks, twining themselves swiftly along the branches, strik¬
ing their hungry parasitic roots into the living bark.
And the trees fought them. Farris could see how the branches
lashed and struck against the killer vines. It was like watching a
man struggle against the crushing coils of the python.
Very likely. Because the trees, the plants, knew. In their own
strange, alien fashion, they were as sentient as their swifter
brothers.
Hunter and hunted. The strangling lianas, the deadly, beautiful
orchid that was like a cancer eating a healthy trunk, the leprous.
154
Edmond Hamilton
crawling fungi—they were the wolves and the jackals of this
leafy world.
Even among the trees, Farris saw, existence was a grim and
never-ending struggle. Silk-cotton and bamboo and ficus trees—
they too knew pain and fear and the dread of death.
He could hear them. Now, with his aural nerves slowed to an
incredible receptivity, he heard the voice of the forest, the true
voice that had nothing to do with the familiar sounds of wind in
the branches.
The primal voice of birth and death that spoke before ever
man appeared on Earth, and would continue to speak after he
was gone.
At first he had been conscious only of that vast, rustling
uproar. Now he could distinguish separate sounds—the thin
screams of grass blades and bamboo-shoots thrusting and surging
out of the earth, the lash and groan of enmeshed and dying
branches, the laughter of young leaves high in the sky, the
stealthy whisper of the coiling vines.
And almost, he could hear thoughts, speaking in his mind.
The age-old thoughts of the trees.
Farris felt a freezing dread. He did not want to listen to the
thoughts of the trees.
And the slow, steady pulsing of darkness and light went on.
Days and nights, rushing with terrible speed over the hunati .
Lys, stumbling along the trail beside him, uttered a little cry
of terror. A snaky black vine had darted out of the bush at her
with cobra swiftness, looping swiftly to encircle her body.
Farris swung his bolo, slashed through the vine. But it struck
out again, growing with that appalling speed, its tip groping for
him.
He slashed again with sick horror, and pulled the girl onward,
on up the side of the plateau.
“I am afraid!” she gasped. “I can hear the thoughts—the
thoughts of the forest!”
“It’s your own imagination!” he told her. “Don’t listen!”
But he too could hear them! Very faintly, like sounds just
below the threshold of hearing. It seemed to him that every
minute—or every minute-long day—he was able to get more
clearly the telepathic impulses of these organisms that lived an
undreamed-of life of their own, side by side with man, yet
forever barred from him, except when man was hunati .
It seemed to him that the temper of the forest had changed, that
his slaying of the vine had made it aware of them. Like a crowd
ALIEN EARTH
155
aroused to anger, the massed trees around them grew wrathful. A
tossing and moaning rose among them.
Branches struck at Farris and the girl, lianas groped with blind
heads and snakelike grace toward them. Brush and bramble
clawed them spitefully, reaching out thorny arms to rake their
flesh. The slender saplings lashed them like leafy whips, the
swift-growing bamboo spears sought to block their path, canes
clattering together as if in rage.
“It’s only in our own minds!” he said to the girl. “Because
the forest is living at the same rate as we, we imagine it’s aware
of us.”
He had to believe that, he knew. He had to, because when he
quit believing it there was only black madness.
“No!” cried Lys. “No! The forest knows we are here.”
Panic fear threatened Farris’ self-control, as the mad uproar of
the forest increased. He ran, dragging the girl with him, shelter¬
ing her with his body from the lashing of the raging forest.
They ran on, deeper into the mighty grove upon the plateau,
under the pulsing rush of day and darkness. And now the trees
about them were brawling giants, great silk-cotton and ficus that
struck crashing blows at each other as their branches fought for
clear sky—contending and terrible leafy giants beneath which the
two humans were pigmies.
But the lesser forest beneath them still tossed and surged with
wrath, still plucked and tore at the two running humans. And
still, and clearer, stronger, Farris’ reeling mind caught the dim
impact of unguessable telepathic impulses.
Then, drowning all those dim and raging thoughts, came vast
and dominating impulses of greater majesty, thought-voices deep
and strong and alien as the voice of primal Earth.
“Stop them!” they seemed to echo in Farris’ mind. “Stop
them! Slay them! For they are our enemies!”
Lys uttered a trembling cry. “Andre!”
Farris saw him, then. Saw Berreau ahead, standing in the
shadow of the monster banyans there. His arms were upraised
toward those looming colossi, as though in worship. Over him
towered the leafy giants, dominating all the forest.
“Stop them! Slay them!”
They thundered, now, those majestic thought-voices that Farris’
mind could barely hear. He was closer to them—closer—
He knew, then, even though his mind refused to admit the
knowledge. Knew whence those mighty voices came, and why
Berreau worshipped the banyans.
And surely they were godlike, these green colossi who had
156
Edmond Hamilton
lived for ages, whose arms reached skyward and whose aerial
roots drooped and stirred and groped like hundreds of hands!
Farris forced that thought violently away. He was a man, of
the world of men, and he must not worship alien lords.
Berreau had turned toward them. The man’s eyes were hot and
raging, and Farris knew even before Berreau spoke that he was
no longer altogether sane.
“Go, both of you!’’ he ordered. “You were fools, to come
here after me! You killed as you came through the forest, and the
forest knows!’’
“Berreau, listen!’’ Farris appealed. “You’ve got to go back
with us, forget this madness!’’
Berreau laughed shrilly. “Is it madness that the Lords even
now voice their wrath against you? You hear it in your mind, but
you are afraid to listen! Be afraid, Farris! There is reason! You
have slain trees, for many years, as you have just slain here—
and the forest knows you for a foe.’’
“Andre!’’ Lys was sobbing, her face half-buried in her hands.
Farris felt his mind cracking under the impact of the crazy
scene. The ceaseless, rushing pulse of light and darkness, the
rustling uproar of the seething forest around them, the vines
creeping snakelike and branches whipping at them and giant
banyans rocking angrily overhead.
‘ This is the world that man lives in all his life, and never sees
or senses!’’ Berfeau was shouting. “I’ve come into it, again and
again. And each time, I’ve heard more clearly the voices of the
Great Ones!
“The oldest and mightiest creatures on our planet! Long ago,
men knew that and worshipped them for the wisdom they could
teach. Yes, worshipped them as Ygdrasil and the Druid Oak and
the Sacred Tree! But modem men have forgotten this other
Earth. Except me, Farris—except me! I’ve found wisdom in this
world such as you never dreamed. And your stupid blindness is
not going to drag me out of it!’’
Farris realized then that it was too late to reason with Berreau.
The man had come too often and too far into this other Earth that
was as alien to humanity as thought it lay across the universe.
It was because he had feared that, that he had brought the little
thing in his jacket pocket. The one thing with which he might
force Berreau to obey.
Farris took it out of his pocket. He held it up so that the other
could see it.
ALIEN EARTH
157
“You know what it is, Berreau! And you know what I can do
with it, if you force me to!”
Wild dread leaped into Berreau’s eyes as he recognized that
glittering little vial from his own laboratory.
“The Burmese Blight! You wouldn’t, Farris! You wouldn’t
turn that loose here!"
“I will!*’ Farris said hoarsely. “I will, unless you come out of
here with us, now!’’
Raging hate and fear were in Berreau’s eyes as he stared at
that innocent corked glass vial of gray-green dust.
He said thickly, “For this, I will kill!’*
Lys screamed. Black lianas had crept upon her as she stood
with her face hidden in her hands. They had writhed around her
legs like twining serpents, they were pulling her down.
The forest seemed to roar with triumph. Vine and branch and
bramble and creeper surged toward them. Dimly thunderous
throbbed the strange telepathic voices.
“Slay them!’’ said the trees.
Farris leaped into that coiling mass of vines, his bolo slashing.
He cut loose the twining lianas that held the girl, sliced fiercely
at the branches that whipped wildly at them.
Then, from behind, Berreau’s savage blow on his elbow knocked
the bolo from his hand.
“I told you not to kill, Farris! I told you!”
“Slay them!” pulsed the alien thought.
Berreau spoke, his eyes not leaving Farris. “Run, Lys. Leave
the forest. This—murderer must die.”
He lunged as he spoke, and there was death in his white face
and clutching hands.
Farris was knocked back, against one of the giant banyan
trunks. They rolled, grappling. And already the vines were
sliding around them—looping and enmeshing them, tightening
upon them!
It was then that the forest shrieked.
A cry telepathic and auditory at the same time—and dreadful.
An utterance of alien agony beyond anything human.
Berreau’s hands fell away from Farris. The Frenchman, en¬
meshed with him by the coiling vines, looked up in horror.
Then Farris saw what had happened. The little vial, the vial of
the blight, had smashed against the banyan trunk as Berreau
charged.
And that little splash of gray-green mould was rushing through
the forest faster than flame! The blight, the gray-green killer
158
Edmond Hamilton
from far away, propagating itself with appalling rapidity! “Dieu!”
screamed Berreau. “Non — non —”
Even normally, a blight seems to spread swiftly. And to Farris
and the other two, slowed down as they were, this blight was a
raging cold fire of death.
It flashed up trunks and limbs and aerial roots of the majestic
banyans, eating leaf and spore and bud. It ran triumphantly
across the ground, over vine and grass and shrub, bursting up
other trees, leaping along the airy bridges of lianas.
And it leaped among the vines that enmeshed the two men! In
mad death-agonies the creepers writhed and tightened.
Farris felt the musty mould in his mouth and nostrils, felt the
construction as of steel cables crushing the life from him. The
world seemed to darken—
Then a steel blade hissed and flashed, and the pressure loosened.
Lys’ voice was in his ears, Lys’ hand trying to drag him from the
dying, tightening creepers that she had partly slashed through.
He wrenched free. “My brother!” she gasped.
With the bolo he sliced clumsily through the mass of dying
writhing snake-vines that still enmeshed Berreau.
Berreau’s face appeared, as he tore away the slashed creepers.
It was dark purple, rigid, his eyes staring and dead. The tighten¬
ing vines had caught him around the throat, strangling him.
Lys knelt beside him, crying wildly. But Farris dragged her to
her feet.
“We have to get out of here! He’s dead—but I’ll carry his
body!”
“No, leave it,” she sobbed. “Leave it here, in the forest.”
Dead eyes, looking up at the death of the alien world of life
into which he had now crossed, forever! Yes, it was fitting.
Farris* heart quailed as he stumbled away with Lys through
the forest that was rocking and raging in its death-throes.
Far away around them, the gray-green death was leaping on.
And fainter, fainter, came the strange telepathic cries that he
would never be sure he had really heard.
“We die, brothers! We die!”
And then, when it seemed to Farris that sanity must give way
beneath the weight of alien agony, there came a sudden change.
The pulsing rush of alternate day and night lengthened in
tempo. Each period of light and darkness was longer now, and
longer—
Out of a period of dizzying semi-consciousness, Farris came
ALIEN EARTH
159
back to awareness. They were standing unsteadily in the blighted
forest, in bright sunlight.
And they were no longer hunati.
The chlorophyll drug had spent its force in their bodies, and
they had come back to the normal tempo of human life.
Lys looked up dazedly, at the forest that now seemed static,
peaceful, immobile—and in which the gray-green blight now
crept so slowly they could not see it move.
“The same forest, and it’s still writhing in death!” Farris said
huskily. “But now that we’re living at normal speed again, we
can’t see it!”
“Please, let us go!” choked the girl. “Away from here, at
once!”
It took but an hour to return to the bungalow and pack what
they could carry, before they took the trail toward the Mekong.
Sunset saw them out of the blighted area of the forest, well on
their way toward the river.
“Will it kill all the forest?” whispered the girl.
“No. The forest will fight back, come back, conquer the
blight, in time. A long time, by our reckoning—years, decades.
But to them, that fierce struggle is raging on even now.”
And as they walked on, it seemed to Farris that still in his
mind there pulsed faintly from far behind that alien, throbbing
cry.
“We die, brothers!”
He did not look back. But he knew that he would not come
back to this or any other forest, and that his profession was
ended, and that he would never kill a tree again.
HISTORY LESSON
by Arthur C. Clarke (1917— )
Startling Stories , May
Trivia contests have become quite popular at science fic¬
tion conventions large and small. Sf fans pride themselves
on their knowledge of the field and don't hesitate to engage
in determined contests to show off their ability to retrieve
information. One exciting category of question involves identi¬
fying the author and title of a work based on the opening
sentence; more rarely, closing lines are used in a similar
fashion. “History Lesson*' contains one of the most famous
closing lines in science fiction—but if you are approaching
the story for the first time, don't you dare take a peek!
Arthur C. Clarke's “The Forgotten Enemy" ('New Worlds,
England, May) just missed inclusion in this volume. — M.H.G.
(During the New York World's Fair of 1939, a “time
capsule'' was buried and the plan was to have it dug up five
thousand years later so that our long-distant descendants
could see what life was like in the United States in the 20th
Century. For that reason, a wide variety of objects were
included, all sealed under an inert atmosphere to preserve
them, as far as possible, from deterioration.
Among the objects included was a copy of Amazing Stories
so that our descendants might be amused by our primitive
science fictional speculations. —And 1 was devastated. The
issue they included was that of February, 1939. Had they
waited one more month for the March, 1939 issue they would
have had the one with my first published story. By that much
did I miss immortality! (Or at least so it seemed to me at the
time, since / had no way of knowing then that I would become
160
HISTORY LESSON
161
so prolific that I might survive—for some time , at least—
without the help of a time capsule.)
But that is personal and unimportant. What do we have left
over to tell us about daily life in ancient Sumeria, Egypt , or
Rome? What trivia just happens to survive? What laundry
bills? What letters written home by students in need of money?
In “History LessonArthur Clarke tackles that subject for
Earth as a whole. — I.A.)
No one could remember when the tribe had begun its long
journey. The land of great rolling plains that had been its first
home was now no more than a half forgotten dream.
For many years Shann and his people had been fleeing through
a country of low hills and sparkling lakes, and now the moun¬
tains lay ahead. This summer they must cross them to the
southern lands. There was little time to lose. The white terror
that had come down from the Poles, grinding continents to dust
and freezing the very air before it, was less than a day’s march
behind.
Shann wondered if the glaciers could climb the mountains
ahead, and within his heart he dared to kindle a little flame of
hope. This might prove a barrier against which even the remorse¬
less ice would batter in vain. In the southern lands of which the
legends spoke, his people might find refuge at last.
It took weeks to discover a pass through which the tribe and
the animals could travel. When midsummer came, they had
camped in a lonely valley where the air was thin and the stars
shone with a brilliance no one had ever seen before.
The summer was waning when Shann took his two sons and
went ahead to explore the way. For three days they climbed, and
for three nights slept as best they could on the freezing rocks.
And on the fourth morning there was nothing ahead but a gentle
rise to a cairn of gray stones built by other travelers, centuries
ago.
Shann felt himself trembling, and not with cold, as they
walked toward the little pyramid of stones. His sons had fallen
behind. No one spoke, for too much was at stake. In a little
while they would know if all their hopes had been betrayed.
To east and west, the wall of mountains curved away as if
embracing the land beneath. Below lay endless miles of undulat¬
ing plain, with a great river swinging across it in tremendous
loops. It was a fertile land, one in which the tribe could raise
162
Arthur C. Clarke
crops knowing that there would be no need to flee before the
harvest came.
Then Shann lifted his eyes to the south, and saw the doom of
all his hopes. For there at the edge of the world glimmered that
deadly light he had seen so often to the north—the glint of ice
below the horizon.
There was no way forward. Through all the years of flight, the
glaciers from the south had been advancing to meet them. Soon
they would be crushed beneath the moving walls of ice. . . .
Southern glaciers did not reach the mountains until a genera¬
tion later. In the last summer the sons of Shann carried the
sacred treasures of the tribe to the lonely cairn overlooking the
plain. The ice that had once gleamed below the horizon was now
almost at their feet. By spring it would be splintering against the
mountain walls.
No one understood the treasures now. They were from a past
too distant for the understanding of any man alive. Their origins
were lost in the mists that surrounded the Golden Age, and how
they had come at last into the possession of this wandering tribe
was a story that now would never be told. For it was the story of
a civilization that had passed beyond recall.
Once, all these pitiful relics had been treasured for some good
reason and now they had become sacred though their meaning
had long been lost. The print in the old books had faded centu¬
ries ago though much of the lettering was still visible—if there
had been any to read it. But many generations had passed since
anyone had had a use for a set of seven-figure logarithms, an
atlas of the world, and the score of Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony,
printed, according to the flyleaf, by H. K. Chu and Sons. At the
City of Pekin in the year a.d. 2371.
The old books were placed reverently in the little crypt that
had been made to receive them. There followed a motley collec¬
tion of fragments—gold and platinum coins, a broken telephoto
lens, a watch, a cold-light lamp, a microphone, the cutter from
an electric shaver, some midget radio tubes, the flotsam that had
been left behind when the great tide of civilization had ebbed
forever.
All these treasures were carefully stowed away in their resting
place. Then came three more relics, the most sacred of all
because the least understood.
The first was a strangely shaped piece of metal, showing the
coloration of intense heat. It was, in its way, the most pathetic of
all these symbols from the past, for it told of man’s greatest
HISTORY LESSON
163
achievement and of the future he might have known. The mahog¬
any stand on which it was mounted bore a silver plate with the
inscription:
Auxiliary igniter from Starboard Jet
Spaceship Morning Star
Earth-Moon, a.d. 1985
Next followed another miracle of the ancient science—a sphere
of transparent plastic with strangely shaped pieces of metal
embedded in it. At its center was a tiny capsule of synthetic
radio-element, surrounded by the converting screens that shifted
its radiation far down the spectrum. As long as the material
remained active, the sphere would be a tiny radio transmitter,
broadcasting power in all directions. Only a few of these spheres
had ever been made. They had been designed as perpetual
beacons to mark the orbits of the asteroids. But man had never
reached the asteroids and the beacons had never been used.
Last of all was a flat, circular tin, wide in comparison with its
depth. It was heavily sealed, and rattled when shaken. The tribal
lore predicted that disaster would follow if it were ever opened,
and no one knew that it held one of the great works of art of
nearly a thousand years before.
The work was finished. The two men rolled the stones back
into place and slowly began to descend the mountainside. Even
to the last, man had given some thought to the future and had
tried to preserve something for posterity.
That winter the great waves of ice began their first assault on
the mountains, attacking from north and south. The foothills
were overwhelmed in the first onslaught, and the glaciers ground
them into dust. But the mountains stood firm, and when the
summer came the ice retreated for a while.
So, winter after winter, the battle continued, and the roar of
the avalanches, the grinding of rock and the explosions of splin¬
tering ice filled the air with tumult. No war of man's had been
fiercer than this, and even man’s battles had not quite engulfed
the globe as this had done.
At last the tidal waves of ice began to subside and to creep
slowly down the flanks of the mountains they had never quite
subdued. The valleys and passes were still firmly in their grip. It
was stalemate. The glaciers had met their match, but their defeat
was too late to be of any use to Man.
So the centuries passed, and presently there happened some-
164
Arthur C. Clarke
thing that must occur once at least in the history of every
world in the universe, no matter how remote and lonely it
may be.
The ship from Venus came five thousand years too late, but its
crew knew nothing of this. While still many millions of miles
away, the telescopes had seen the great shroud of ice that made
Earth the most brilliant object in the sky next to the sun itself.
Here and there the dazzling sheet was marred by black specks
that revealed the presence of almost buried mountains. That was
all. The rolling oceans, the plains and forests, the deserts and
lakes—all that had been the world of Man was sealed beneath
the ice, perhaps forever.
The ship closed in to Earth and established an orbit less than a
thousand miles away. For five days it circled the planet, while
cameras recorded all that was left to see and a hundred instru¬
ments gathered information that would give the Venusian scien¬
tists many years of work.
An actual landing was not intended. There seemed little pur¬
pose in it. But on the sixth day the picture changed. A panoramic
monitor, driven to the limit of its amplification, detected the
dying radiation of the five-thousand-year-old beacon. Through
all the centuries, it had been sending out its signals with ever-
failing strength as its radioactive heart steadily weakened.
The monitor locked on the beacon frequency. In the control
room, a bell clamored for attention. A little later, the Venusian
ship broke free from its orbit and slanted down toward Earth,
toward a range of mountains that still towered proudly above the
ice, and to a cairn of gray stones that the years had scarcely
touched. . . .
The great disc of the Sun blazed fiercely in a sky no longer
veiled with mist, for the clouds that had once hidden Venus had
now completely gone. Whatever force had caused the change in
the Sun’s radiation had doomed one civilization, but had given
birth to another. Less than five thousand years before, the half¬
savage people of Venus had seen Sun and stars for the first time.
Just as the science of Earth had begun with astronomy, so had
that of Venus, and on the warm, rich world that man had never
seen progress had been incredibly rapid.
Perhaps the Venusians had been lucky. They never knew the
Dark Ages that held Man enchained for a thousand years. They
missed the long detour into chemistry and mechanics but came at
once to the more fundamental laws of radiation physics. In the
time that man had taken to progress from the Pyramids to the
HISTORY LESSON
165
rocket-propelled spaceship, the Venusians had passed from the
discovery of agriculture to antigravity itself—the ultimate secret
that Man had never learned.
The warm ocean that still bore most of the young planet’s life
rolled its breakers languidly against the sandy shore. So new was
this continent that the very sands were coarse and gritty. There
had not yet been time enough for the sea to wear them smooth.
The scientists lay half in the water, their beautiful reptilian
bodies gleaming in the sunlight. The greatest minds of Venus
had gathered on this shore from all the islands of the planet.
What they were going to hear they did not yet know, except that
it concerned the Third World and the mysterious race that had
peopled it before the coming of the ice.
The Historian was standing on the land, for the instruments he
wished to use had no love of water. By his side was a large
machine which attracted many curious glances from his colleagues.
It was clearly concerned with optics, for a lens system projected
from it toward a screen of white material a dozen yards away.
The Historian began to speak. Briefly he recapitulated what
little had been discovered concerning the third planet and its
people.
He mentioned the centuries of fruitless research that had failed
to interpret a single word of the writings of Earth. The planet had
been inhabited by a race of great technical ability. That, at least,
was proved by the few pieces of machinery that had been found
in the cairn upon the mountain.
“We do not know why so advanced a civilization came to an
end,” he observed. “Almost certainly, it had sufficient knowl¬
edge to survive an Ice Age. There must have been some factor of
which we know nothing. Possibly disease or racial degeneration
may have been responsible. It has even been suggested that the
tribal conflicts endemic to our own species in prehistoric times
may have continued on the third planet after the coming of
technology.
“Some philosophers maintain that knowledge of machinery
does not necessarily imply a high degree of civilization, and it is
theoretically possible to have wars in a society possessing me¬
chanical power, flight, and even radio. Such a conception is
alien to our thoughts, but we must admit its possibility. It would
certainly account for the downfall of the lost race.
“It has always been assumed that we should never know
anything of the physical form of the creatures who lived in
Planet Three. For centuries our artists have been depicting scenes
from the history of the dead world, peopling it with all manner
166
Arthur C. Clarke
of fantastic beings. Most of the creations have resembled us
more or less closely, though it has often been pointed out that
because we are reptiles it does not follow that all intelligent life
must necessarily be reptilian.
“We now know the answer to one of the most baffling
problems of history. At last, after a hundred years of research,
we have discovered the exact form and nature of the ruling life
on the Third Planet.”
There was a murmur of astonishment from the assembled
scientists. Some were so taken aback that they disappeared for a
while into the comfort of the ocean, as all Venusians were apt to
do in moments of stress. The Historian waited until his col¬
leagues reemerged into the element they so disliked. He himself
was quite comfortable, thanks to the tiny sprays that were contin¬
ually playing over his body. With their help he could live on
land for many hours before having to return to the ocean.
The excitement slowly subsided and the lecturer continued:
“One of the most puzzling of the objects found on Planet
Three was a flat metal container holding a great length of
transparent plastic material, perforated at the edges and wound
tightly into a spool. This transparent tape at first seemed quite
featureless, but an examination with the new subelectronic micro¬
scope has shown that this is not the case. Along the surface of
the material, invisible to our eyes but perfectly clear under the
correct radiation, are literally thousands of tiny pictures. It is
believed that they were imprinted on the material by some
chemical means, and have faded with the passage of time.
“These pictures apparently form a record of life as it was on
the Third Planet at the height of its civilization. They are not
independent. Consecutive pictures are almost identical, differing
only in the detail of movement. The purpose of such a record is
obvious. It is only necessary to project the scenes in rapid
succession to give an illusion of continuous movement. We have
made a machine to do this, and I have here an exact reproduction
of the picture sequence.
“The scenes you are now going to witness take us back many
thousands of years, to the great days of our sister planet. They
show a complex civilization, many of whose activities we can
only dimly understand. Life seems to have been very violent and
energetic, and much that you will see is quite baffling.
“It is clear that the Third Planet was inhabited by a number of
different species, none of them reptilian. That is a blow to our
pride, but the conclusion is inescapable. The dominant type of
iife appears to have been a two-armed biped. It walked upright
HISTORY LESSON
167
and covered its body with some flexible material, possibly for
protection against the cold, since even before the Ice Age the
planet was at a much lower temperature than our own world. But
I will not try your patience any further. You will now see the
record of which I have been speaking.*’
A ‘brilliant light flashed from the projector. There was a gentle
whirring, and on the screen appeared hundreds of strange beings
moving rather jerkily to and fro. The picture expanded to em¬
brace one of the creatures, and the scientists could see that the
Historian’s description had been correct.
The creature possessed two eyes, set rather close together, but
the other facial adomaments were a little obscure. There was a
large orifice in the lower portion of the head that was continually
opening and closing. Possibly it had something to do with the
creature’s breathing.
The scientists watched spellbound as the strange being became
involved in a series of fantastic adventures. There was an incredi¬
bly violent conflict with another, slightly different creature. It
seemed certain that they must both be killed, but when it was all
over neither seemed any the worse.
Then came a furious drive over miles of country in a four-
wheeled mechanical device which was capable of extraordinary
feats of locomotion. The ride ended in a city packed with other
vehicles moving in all directions at breathtaking speeds. No one
was surprised to see two of the machines meet head on with
devastating results.
After that, events became even more complicated. It was now
quite obvious that it would take many years of research to
analyze and understand all that was happening. It was also clear
that the record was a work of art, somewhat stylized, rather than
an exact reproduction of life as it actually had been on the Third
Planet.
Most of the scientists felt themselves completely dazed when
the sequence of pictures came to an end. There was a final flurry
of motion, in which the creature that had been the center of
interest became involved in some tremendous but incomprehensi¬
ble catastrophe. The picture contracted to a circle, centered on
the creature’s head.
The last scene of all was an expanded view of its face,
obviously expressing some powerful emotion. But whether it
was rage, grief, defiance, resignation or some other feeling could
not be guessed. The picture vanished. For a moment some
lettering appeared on the screen, then it was all over.
For several minutes there was complete silence, save the
168
Arthur C. Clarke
lapping of the waves upon the sand. The scientists were too
stunned to speak. The fleeting glimpse of Earth’s civilization had
had a shattering effect on their minds. Then little groups began
to start talking together, first in whispers and then more and
more loudly as the implications of what they had seen became
clearer. Presently the Historian called for attention and addressed
the meeting again.
“We are now planning,” he said, “a vast program of research
to extract all available knowledge from this record. Thousands of
copies are being made for distribution to all workers. You will
appreciate the problems involved. The psychologists in particular
have an immense task confronting them.
“But I do not doubt that we shall succeed. In another generation,
who can say what we many not have learned of this wonderful
race? Before we leave, let us look again at our remote cousins,
whose wisdom may have surpassed our own but of whom so
little has survived.”
Once more the final picture flashed on the screen, motionless
this time, for the projector had been stopped. With something
like awe, the scientists gazed at the still figure from the past,
while in turn the little biped stared back at them with its charac¬
teristic expression of arrogant bad temper.
For the rest of time it would symbolize the human race. The
psychologists of Venus would analyze its actions and watch its
every movement until they could reconstruct its mind. Thou¬
sands of books would be written about it. Intricate philosophies
would be contrived to account for its behavior.
But all this labor, all this research, would be utterly in vain.
Perhaps the proud and lonely figure on the screen was smiling
sardonically at the scientists who were starting on their agelong
fruitless quest.
Its secret would be safe as long as the universe endured, for no
one now would ever read the lost language of Earth. Millions of
times in the ages to come those last few words would flash
across the screen, and none could ever guess their meaning:
A Walt Disney Production.
ETERNITY LOST _
by Clifford D. Simak (1904- )
Astounding Science Fiction , July
As Isaac points out, this fine story is about immortality,
one of the most important themes in modern science fiction.
However, it is also about personal and political corruption,
which in modern science fiction is a common assumption, if
not a theme. The corruptibility of human beings in positions
of power in sf stories is the rule, not the exception, and
directly parallels attitudes in American society, which views
politicians with great distrust, ranking them last out of twenty
occupational types in a recent poll (used car salesman was
nineteenth). However, it should be pointed out that these
attitudes are almost universal across human cultures.
We have discussed the impressive career of Clifford D.
Simak in earlier volumes of this series, but for the record let
it be stated again that he has been working productively in
this field for some fifty-five years, and is still near the top of
his form.—M.H.G.
(Immortality is the oldest dream of human beings. Death is
the ultimate outrage; the ultimate disappointment. Why should
people die?
Surely, that was not the original plan. Human beings were
meant to live forever and it was only through some small
miscalculation or misstep that death entered the world. In
Gilgamesh, the oldest surviving epic in the world, Gilgamesh
searched for immortality and attained it and then lost it when,
while he was asleep, a snake filched the plant that contained
the secret.
169
170
Clifford D. Simak
In the story of Adam and Eve, with which the Bible begins,
Adam and Eve had immortality, until a snake — But you know
that one.
And even today, so many people, so many people [even
that supreme rationalist, Martin Gardner, to my astonish¬
ment] can’t accept death but believe that something about us
must remain eternal. Personally, I don’t know why. Consider¬
ing how few people find any happiness in this wonderful
world of ours, why should human beings, generally, feel
anything but relief at the thought that life is only temporary?
Science fiction writers sometimes play with the possibility
of physical immortality attained through technological advance,
but you can’t cheat drama. The excitement comes, as with
Gilgamesh and Adam, with the chance that immortality may
be lost, as in “Eternity Lost,’’ by Clifford D. Simak. — I.A.)
Mr. Reeves: The situation, as I see it, calls for well defined
safeguards which would prevent continuation of life from
falling under the patronage of political parties or other groups
in power.
Chairman Leonard: You mean you are afraid it might become a
political football?
Mr. Reeves: Not only that, sir, I am afraid that political parties
might use it to continue beyond normal usefulness the lives
of certain so-called elder statesmen who are needed by the
party to maintain prestige and dignity in the public eye.
From the Records of a hearing before the science
subcommittee of the public policy committee of the World
House of Representatives.
Senator Homer Leonard’s visitors had something on their
minds. They fidgeted mentally as they sat in the senator’s office
and drank the senator’s good whiskey. They talked, quite
importantly, as was their wont, but they talked around the thing
they had come to say. They circled it like a hound dog circling a
coon, waiting for an opening, circling the subject to catch an
opportunity that might make the message sound just a bit
offhanded—as if they had just thought of it in passing and had
not called purposely on the senator to say it.
It was queer, the senator told himself. For he had known these
two for a good while now. And they had known him equally as
long. There should be nothing they should hesitate to tell him.
ETERNITY LOST
171
They had, in the past, been brutally frank about many things in
his political career.
It might be, he thought, more bad news from North America,
but he was as well acquainted with that bad news as they. After
all, he told himself philosophically, a man cannot reasonably
expect to stay in office forever. The voters, from sheer boredom
if nothing else, would finally reach the day when they would
vote against a man who had served them faithfully and well. And
the senator was candid enough to admit, at least to himself, that
there had been times when Jie had served the voters of North
America neither faithfully nor well.
Even at that, he thought, he had not been beaten yet. It was
still several months until election time and there was a trick or
two that he had never tried, political dodges that even at this late
date might save the senatorial hide. Given the proper time and
the proper place and he would win out yet. Timing, he told
himself—proper timing is the thing that counts.
He sat quietly in his chair, a great hulk of a man, and for a
single instant he closed his eyes to shut out the room and the
sunlight in the window. Timing, he thought. Yes, timing and a
feeling for the public, a finger on the public pulse, the ability to
know ahead of time what the voter eventually will come to
think—those were the ingredients of good strategy. To know
ahead of time, to be ahead in thinking, so that in a week or a
month or year, the voters would say to one another: “You know.
Bill, old Senator Leonard had it right. Remember what he said
last week—or month or year—over there in Geneva. Yes, sir, he
laid it on the line. There ain’t much that gets past that old fox of
a Leonard.”
He opened his eyes a slit, keeping them still half closed so his
visitors might think he’d only had them half closed all the time.
For it was impolite and a political mistake to close one’s eyes
when one had visitors. They might get the idea one wasn’t
interested. Or they might seize the opportunity to cut one’s
throat.
It’s because I’m getting old again, the senator told himself.
Getting old and drowsy. But just as smart as ever. Yes, sir, said
the senator, talking to himself, just as smart and slippery as I
ever was.
He saw by the tight expressions on the faces of the two that
they finally were set to tell him the thing they had come to tell.
All their circling and sniffing had been of no avail. Now they
had to come out with it, on the line, cold turkey.
“There has been a certain matter,” said Alexander Gibbs,
172
Clifford D. Simak
“which has been quite a problem for the party for a long time
now. We had hoped that matters would so arrange themselves
that we wouldn’t need to call it to your attention, senator. But
the executive committee held a meeting in New York the other
night and it seemed to be the consensus that we communicate it
to you.’’
It’s bad, thought the senator, even worse than I thought it
might be—for Gibbs is talking in his best double-crossing manner.
The senator gave them no help. He sat quietly in his chair and
held the whiskey glass in a steady hand and did not ask what it
was all about, acting as if he didn’t really care.
Gibbs floundered slightly. “It’s a rather personal matter,
senator,’’ he said.
“It’s this life continuation business,’’ blurted Andrew Scott.
They sat in shocked silence, all three of them, for Scott should
not have said it in that way. In politics, one is not blunt and
forthright, but devious and slick.
“I see,’’ the senator said finally. “The party thinks the voters
would like it better if I were a normal man who would die a
normal death.’’
Gibbs smoothed his face of shocked surprise.
“The common people resent men living beyond their normal
time,’’ he said. “Especially—’’
“Especially,’’ said the senator, “those who have done nothing
to deserve it.’’
“I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,*’ Gibbs protested.
“Perhaps not,*’ said the senator. “But no matter how you say
it, that is what you mean.*’
They sat uncomfortably in the office chairs, with the bright
Geneva sunlight pouring through the windows.
“I presume,*’ said the senator, “that the party, having found I
am no longer an outstanding asset, will not renew my application
for life continuation. I suppose that is what you were sent to tell
me.’’
Might as well get it over with, he told himself grimly. Now
that it’s out in the open, there’s no sense in beating around the
bush.
“That’s just about it, senator,’’ said Scott.
“That’s exactly it,’’ said Gibbs.
The senator heaved his great body from the chair, picked up
the whiskey bottle, filled their glasses and his own.
“You delivered the death sentence very deftly,’’ he told them.
“It deserves a drink.’’
He wondered what they had thought that he would do. Plead
ETERNITY LOST
173
with them, perhaps. Or storm around the office. Or denounce the
party.
Puppets, he thought. Errand boys. Poor, scared errand boys.
They drank, their eyes on him, and silent laughter shook
inside him from knowing that the liquor tasted very bitter in their
mouths.
Chairman Leonard: You are agreed then , Mr. Chapman, with the
other witnesses, that no person should he allowed to seek
continuation of life for himself, that it should be granted
only upon application by someone else, that —
Mr. Chapman: It should be a gift of society to those persons who
are in the unique position of being able to materially benefit
the human race.
Chairman Leonard: That is very aptly stated, sir.
From the Records of a hearing before the science subcom¬
mittee of the public policy committee of the World House
of Representatives.
The senator settled himself carefully and comfortably into a
chair in the reception room of the Life Continuation Institute and
unfolded his copy of the North American Tribune.
Column one said that system trade was normal, according to a
report by the World Secretary of Commerce. The story went on
at length to quote the secretary’s report. Column two was headed
by an impish box that said a new life form may have been found
on Mars, but since the discoverer was a spaceman who had been
more than ordinarily drunk, the report was being viewed with
some skepticism. Under the box was a story reporting a list of
boy and girl health champions selected by the state of Finland to
be entered later in the year in the world health contest. The story
in column three gave the latest information on the unstable love
life of the world’s richest woman.
Column four asked a question:
WHAT HAPPENED TO DR. CARSON:
NO RECORD OF REPORTED DEATH
The story, the senator saw, was by-lined Anson Lee and the
senator chuckled dryly. Lee was up to something. He was al¬
ways up to something, always ferreting out some fact that eventu¬
ally was sure to prove embarrassing to someone. Smart as a steel
trap, that Lee, but a bad man to get into one’s hair.
174 Clifford D. Simak
There had been, for example, that matter of the spaceship
contract.
Anson Lee, said the senator underneath his breath, is a pest.
Nothing but a pest.
But Dr. Carson? Who was Eh*. Carson?
The senator played a little mental game with himself, trying to
remember, trying to identify the name before he read the story.
Dr. Carson?
Why, said the senator, I remember now. Long time ago. A
biochemist or something of the sort. A very brilliant man. Did
something with colonies of soil bacteria, breeding the things for
therapeutic work.
Yes, said the senator, a very brilliant man. I remember that I
met him once. Didn’t understand half the things he said. But that
was long ago. A hundred years or more.
A hundred years ago—maybe more than that.
Why, bless me, said the senator, he must be one of us.
The senator nodded and the paper slipped from his hands and
fell upon the floor. He jerked himself erect. There I go again, he
told himself. Dozing. It’s old age creeping up again.
He sat in his chair, very erect and quiet, like a small scared
child that won’t admit it’s scared, and the old, old fear came
tugging at his brain. Too long, he thought. I’ve already waited
longer than I should. Waiting for the party to renew my applica¬
tion and now the party won’t. They’ve thrown me overboard.
They’ve deserted me just when I needed them the most.
Death sentence, he had said back in the office, and that was
what it was—for he couldn’t last much longer. He didn’t have
much time. It would take a while to engineer whatever must be
done. One would have to move most carefully and never tip
one*s hand. For there was a penalty—a terrible penalty.
The girl said to him: “Dr. Smith will see you now.’’
“Eh?’* said the senator.
“You asked to see Dr. Dana Smith,” the girl reminded him.
“He will see you now.”
“Thank you, miss,” said the senator. “I was sitting here half
dozing.”
He lumbered to his feet.
“That door,” said the girl.
“I know,” the senator mumbled testily. “I know. I’ve been
here many times before.”
Dr. Smith was waiting.
ETERNITY LOST
175
“Have a chair, senator,” he said. “Have a drink? Well, then,
a cigar, maybe. What is on your mind?”
The senator took his time, getting himself adjusted to the
chair. Grunting comfortably, he clipped the end off the cigar,
rolled it in his mouth.
“Nothing particular on my mind,” he said. “Just dropped
around to pass the time of day. Have a great and abiding interest
in your work here. Always have had. Associated with it from the
very start.”
The director nodded. “I know. You conducted the original
hearings on life continuation.”
The senator chuckled. “Seemed fairly simple then. There
were problems, of course, and we recognized them and we tried
the best we could to meet them.”
“You did amazingly well,” the director told him. “The code
you drew up five hundred years ago has never been questioned
for its fairness and the few modifications which have been
necessary have dealt with minor points which no one could have
anticipated.”
“But it’s taken too long,” said the senator.
The director stiffened. “I don’t understand,” he said.
The senator lighted the cigar, applying his whole attention to
it, flaming the end carefully so it caught even fire.
He settled himself more solidly in the chair. “It was like
this,” he said. “We recognized life continuation as a first step
only, a rather blundering first step toward immortality. We
devised the code as an interim instrument to take care of the
period before immortality was available—not to a selected few,
but to everyone. We viewed the few who could be given life
continuation as stewards, persons who would help to advance the
day when the race could be granted immortality.”
“That still is the concept,” Dr. Smith said, coldly.
“But the people grow impatient.”
“That is just too bad,” Smith told him. “The people will
simply have to wait.”
“As a race, they may be willing to,” explained the senator.
“As individuals, they’re not.”
“I fail to see your point, senator.”
“There may not be a point,” said the senator. “In late years
I’ve often debated with myself the wisdom of the whole procedure.
Life continuation is a keg of dynamite if it fails of immortality. It
will breed, system-wide revolt if the people wait too long.”
“Have you a solution, senator?”
“No,” confessed the senator. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I’ve
176
Clifford D. Simak
often thought that it might have been better if we had taken the
people into our confidence, let them know all that was going on.
Kept them up with all developments. An informed people are a
rational people.”
The director did not answer and the senator felt the cold
weight of certainty seep into his brain.
He knows, he told himself. He knows the party has decided
not to ask that 1 be continued. He knows that I’m a dead man.
He knows I’m almost through and can’t help him any more—and
he’s crossed me out. He won’t tell me a thing. Not the thing I
want to know.
But he did not allow his face to change. He knew his face
would not betray him. His face was too well trained.
“I know there is an answer,” said the senator. “There’s
always been an answer to any question about immortality. You
can’t have it until there’s living space. Living space to throw
away, more than we ever think we’ll need, and a fair chance to
find more of it if it’s ever needed.”
Dr. Smith nodded. “That’s the answer, senator. The only
answer I can give.”
He sat silent for a moment, then he said: “Let me assure you
on one point, senator. When Extrasolar Research finds the living
space, we’ll have the immortality.”
The senator heaved himself out of the chair, stood planted
solidly on his feet.
“It’s good to hear you say that, doctor,” he said. “It is very
heartening. I thank you for the time you gave me.”
Out on the street, the senator thought bitterly:
They have it now. They have immortality. All they’re waiting
for is the living space and another hundred years will find that.
Another hundred years will simply have to find it.
Another hundred years, he told himself, just one more
continuation, and I would be in for good and all.
Mr. Andrews: We must be sure there is a divorcement of life
continuation from economics. A man who has money must
not be allowed to purchase additional life , either through the
payment of money or the pressure of influence , while an¬
other man is doomed to die a natural death simply because
he happens to be poor.
Chairman Leonard: / don’t believe that situation has ever been in
question.
Mr. Andrews: Nevertheless , it is a matter which must be
emphasized again and again. Life continuation must not be a
ETERNITY LOST
177
commodity to be sold across the counter at so many dollars
for each added year of life.
From the Records of a hearing before the science subcom¬
mittee of the public policy committee of the World House
of Representatives.
The senator sat before the chessboard and idly worked at the
problem. Idly, since his mind was on other things than chess.
So they had immortality, had it and were waiting, holding it a
secret until there was assurance of sufficient living space. Hold¬
ing it a secret from the people and from the government and
from the men and women who had spent many lifetimes working
for the thing which already had been found.
For Smith had spoken, not as a man who was merely confident,
but as a man who knew. When Extrasolar Research finds the
living space, he’d said, we’ll have immortality. Which meant
they had it now. Immortality was not predictable. You would not
know you’d have it; you would only know if and when you had
it.
The senator moved a bishop and saw that he was wrong. He
slowly pulled it back.
Living space was the key, and not living space alone, but
economic living space, self-supporting in terms of food and other
raw materials, but particularly in food. For if living space had
been all that mattered, Man had it in Mars and Venus and the
moons of Jupiter. But not one of those worlds was self-supporting.
They did not solve the problem.
Living space was all they needed and in a hundred years
they’d have that. Another hundred years was all that anyone
would need to come into possession of the common human
heritage of immortality.
Another continuation would give me that hundred years, said
the senator, talking to himself. A hundred years and some to
spare, for this time Til be careful of myself. I’ll lead a cleaner
life. Eat sensibly and cut out liquor and tobacco and the
woman-chasing.
There were ways and means, of course. There always were.
And he would find them, for he knew all the dodges. After five
hundred years in world government, you got to know them all. If
you didn’t know them, you simply didn’t last.
Mentally he listed the possibilities as they occurred to him.
ONE: A person could engineer a continuation for someone
178
Clifford D. Simak
else and then have that person assign the continuation to him. It
would be costly, of course, but it might be done.
You’d have to find someone you could trust and maybe you
couldn’t find anyone you could trust that far—for life continua¬
tion was something hard to come by. Most people, once they got
it, wouldn’t give it back.
Although on second thought, it probably wouldn’t work. For
there’d be legal angles. A continuation was a gift of society to
one specific person to be used by him alone. It would not be
transferable. It would not be legal property. It would not be
something that one owned. It could not be bought or sold, it
could not be assigned.
If the person who had been granted a continuation died before
he got to use it—died of natural causes, of course, of wholly
natural causes that could be provable—why, maybe, then— But
still it wouldn’t work. Not being property, the continuation
would not be part of one’s estate. It could not be bequeathed. It
most likely would revert to the issuing agency.
Cross that one off, the senator told himself.
TWO: He might travel to New York and talk to the party’s
executive secretary. After all, Gibbs and Scott were mere
messengers. They had their orders to carry out the dictates of the
party and that was all. Maybe if he saw someone in authority—
But, the senator scolded himself, that is wishful thinking. The
party’s through with me. They’ve pushed their continuation rack¬
et as far as they dare push it and they have wrangled about all
they figure they can get. They don’t dare ask for more and they
need my continuation for someone else most likely—someone
who’s a comer; someone who has vote appeal.
And I, said the senator, am an old has-been.
Although I’m a tricky old rascal, and ornery if I have to be,
and slippery as five hundred years of public life can make one.
After that long, said the senator, parenthetically, you have no
more illusions, not even of yourself.
I couldn’t stomach it, he decided. I couldn’t live with myself
if I went crawling to New York—and a thing has to be pretty bad
to make me feel like that. I’ve never crawled before and I’m not
crawling now, not even for an extra hundred years and a shot at
immortality.
Cross that one off, too, said the senator.
THREE: Maybe someone could be bribed.
Of all the possibilities, that sounded the most reasonable.
There always was someone who had a certain price and always
ETERNITY LOST
179
someone else who could act as intermediary. Naturally, a world
senator could not get mixed up directly in a deal of that sort.
It might come a little high, but what was money for? After all,
he reconciled himself, he’d been a frugal man of sorts and had
been able to lay away a wad against such a day as this.
The senator moved a rook and it seemed to be all right, so he
left it there.
Of course, once he managed the continuation, he would have
to disappear. He couldn’t flaunt his triumph in the party’s face.
He couldn’t take a chance of someone asking how he’d been
continuated. He’d have to become one of the people, seek to be for¬
gotten, live in some obscure place and keep out of the public eye.
Norton was the man to see. No matter what one wanted,
Norton was the man to see. An appointment to be secured,
someone to be killed, a concession on Venus or a spaceship
contract—Norton did the job. All quietly and discreetly and no
questions asked. That is, if you had the money. If you didn’t
have the money, there was no use of seeing Norton.
Otto came into the room on silent feet.
“A gentleman to see you, sir,” he said.
The senator stiffened upright in his chair.
“What do you mean by sneaking up on me?’’ he shouted.
“Always pussyfooting. Trying to startle me. After this you
cough or fall over a chair or something so I’ll know that you’re
around.’’
“Sorry, sir,’’ said Otto. “There’s a gentleman here. And
there are those letters on the desk to read.’’
“I’ll read the letters later,’’ said the senator.
“Be sure you don’t forget,” Otto told him, stiffly.
“I never forget,” said the senator. “You’d think I was getting
senile, the way you keep reminding me.”
“There’s a gentleman to see you,” Otto said patiently. “A
Mr. Lee.”
“Anson Lee, perhaps.”
Otto sniffed. “I believe that was his name. A newspaper
person, sir.”
“Show him in,” said the senator.
He sat stolidly in his chair and thought: Lee’s found out about
it. Somehow he’s ferreted out the fact the party’s thrown me
over. And he’s here to crucify me.
He may suspect, but he cannot know. He may have heard a
rumor, but he can’t be sure. The party would keep mum, must
180
Clifford D. Simak
necessarily keep mum, since it can’t openly admit its traffic in
life continuation. So Lee, having heard a rumor, had come to
blast it out of me, to catch me by surprise and trip me up with
words.
I must not let him do it, for once the thing is known, the
wolves will come in packs knee deep.
Lee was walking into the room and the senator rose and shook
his hand.
“Sorry to disturb you, senator,” Lee told him, “but I thought
maybe you could help me.”
“Anything at all,” the senator said, affably. “Anything I can.
Sit down, Mr. Lee.”
“Perhaps you read my story in the morning paper,” said Lee.
“The one on Dr. Carson’s disappearance.”
“No,” said the senator. “No, I’m afraid I—”
He rumbled to a stop, astounded.
He hadn’t read the paper!
He had forgotten to read the paper!
He always read the paper. He never failed to read it. It was a
solemn rite, starting at the front and reading straight through to
the back, skipping only those sections which long ago he’d
found not to be worth the reading.
He’d had the paper at the institute and he had been interrupted
when the girl told him that Dr. Smith would see him. He had
come out of the office and he’d left the paper in the reception
room.
It was a terrible thing. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should so
upset him that he forgot to read the paper.
“I’m afraid I didn’t read the story,” the senator said lamely.
He simply couldn’t force himself to admit that he hadn’t read the
paper.
“Dr. Carson,” said Lee, “was a biochemist, a fairly famous
one. He died ten years or so ago, according to an announcement
from a little village in Spain, where he had gone to live. But I
have reason to believe, senator, that he never died at all, that he
may still be living.”
“Hiding?” asked the senator.
“Perhaps,” said Lee. “Although there seems no reason that
he should. His record is entirely spotless.”
“Why do you doubt he died, then?”
“Because there’s no death certificate. And he’s not the only
one who died without benefit of certificate.”
“Hm-m-m,” said the senator.
ETERNITY LOST
181
“Galloway, the anthropologist, died five years ago. There’s
no certificate. Henderson, the agricultural expert, died six years
ago. There’s no certificate. There are a dozen more I know of
and probably many that I don’t.’’
“Anything in common?’’ asked the senator. “Any circum¬
stances that might link these people?’*
“Just one thing,’* said Lee. “They were all continuators.’*
“I see,*’ said the senator. He clasped the arms of his chair
with a fierce grip to keep his hands from shaking.
“Most interesting,’’ he said. “Very interesting.’’
“I know you can’t tell me anything officially,’’ said Lee,
“but I thought you might give me a fill-in, an off-the-record
background. You wouldn’t let me quote you, of course, but any
clues'you might give me, any hint at all—’’
He waited hopefully.
“Because I’ve been close to the Life Continuation people?’’
asked the senator.
Lee nodded. “If there’s anything to know, you know it,
senator. You headed the committee that held the original hear¬
ings on life continuation. Since then you’ve held various other
congressional posts in connection with it. Only this morning you
saw Dr. Smith.’’
“I can’t tell you anything,’’ mumbled the senator. “I don’t
know anything. You see, it’s a matter of policy—’’
“I had hoped you would help me, senator.’*
“I can’t,’’ said the senator. “You’ll never believe it, of
course, but I really can’t.*’
He sat silently for a moment and then he asked a question:
“You say all these people you mention were continuators. You
checked, of course, to see if their applications had been renewed?’*
“I did,’’ said Lee. “There are no renewals for any one of
them—at least no records of renewals. Some of them were
approaching death limit and they actually may be dead by now,
although I doubt that any of them died at the time or place
announced.”
“Interesting,** said the senator. “And quite a mystery, too.’’
Lee deliberately terminated the discussion. He gestured at the
chessboard. “Are you an expert, senator?’’
The senator shook his head. “The game appeals to me. I fool
around with it. It’s a game of logic and also a game of ethics.
You are perforce a gentleman when you play it. You observe
certain rules of correctness of behavior.’’
“Like life, senator?’*
“Like life should be,’’ said the senator. “When the odds are
182
Clifford D. Simak
too terrific, you resign. You do not force your opponent to play
out to the bitter end. That’s ethics. When you see that you can’t
win, but that you have a fighting chance, you try for the next
best thing—a draw. That’s logic.”
Lee laughed, a bit uncomfortably. “You’ve lived according to
those rules, senator?”
“I’ve done my best,” said the senator, trying to sound humble.
Lee rose. “I must be going, senator.”
“Stay and have a drink.”
Lee shook his head. “Thanks, but I have work to do.”
“I owe you a drink,” said the senator. “Remind me of it
sometime.”
For a long time after Lee left. Senator Homer Leonard sat
unmoving in his chair.
Then he reached out a hand and picked up a knight to move it,
but his fingers shook so that he dropped it and it clattered on the
board.
Any person who gains the gift of life continuation by illegal or
extralegal means, without bona fide recommendation or proper
authorization through recognized channels, shall be, in effect,
excommunicated from the human race. The facts of that person's
guilt, once proved, shall be published by every means at humanity's
command throughout the Earth and to every corner of the Earth
so that all persons may know and recognize him. To further
insure such recognition and identification, said convicted person
must wear at all times, conspicuously displayed upon his person,
a certain badge which shall advertise his guilt. While he may not
be denied the ordinary basic requirements of life, such as food,
adequate clothing, a minimum of shelter and medical care, he
shall not be allowed to partake of or participate in any of the
other refinements of civilization. He will not be allowed to
purchase any item in excess of the barest necessities for the
preservation of life, health and decency; he shall be barred from
all endeavors and normal associations of humankind; he shall
not have access to nor benefit of any library, lecture hall,
amusement place or other facility, either private or public,
designed for instruction, recreation or entertainment. Nor may
any person , under certain penalties hereinafter set forth , know¬
ingly converse with him or establish any human relationship
whatsoever with him. He will be suffered to live out his life
within the framework of the human community, but to all intent
and purpose he will be denied all the privileges and obligations
of a human being. And the same provisions as are listed above
ETERNITY LOST
183
shall apply in full and equal force to any person or persons who
shall in any way knowingly aid such a person to obtain life
continuation by other than legal means.
From The Code of Life Continuation.
“What you mean,” said J. Barker Norton, “is that the party
all these years has been engineering renewals of life continuation
for you. Paying you off for services well rendered.”
The senator nodded miserably.
“And now that you’re on the verge of losing an election, they
figure you aren’t worth it any longer and have refused to ask for
a renewal.”
“In curbstone language,” said the senator, “that sums it up
quite neatly.”
“And you come running to me,” said Norton. “What in the
world do you think I can do about it?* *
The senator leaned forward. “Let’s put it on a business basis,
Norton. You and I have worked together before.”
“That’s right,” said Norton. “Both of us cleaned up on that
spaceship deal.”
The senator said: “I want another hundred years and I’m
willing to pay for it. I have no doubt you can arrange it for me.”
“How?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the senator. “I’m leaving that to
you. I don’t care how you do it.”
Norton leaned back in his chair and made a tent out of his
fingers.
“You figure I could bribe someone to recommend you. Or
bribe some continuation technician to give you a renewal without
authorization.”
“Those are a pair of excellent ideas,” agreed the senator.
“And face excommunication if I were found out,” said Norton.
“Thanks, senator, I’m having none of it.”
The senator sat impassively, watching the face of the man
across the desk.
“A hundred thousand,” the senator said quietly.
Norton laughed at him.
“A half million, then.”
“Remember that excommunication, senator. It’s got to be
worth my while to take a chance like that.”
“A million,” said the senator. “And that’s absolutely final.”
“A million now,” said Norton. “Cold cash. No receipt. No
record of the transaction. Another million when and if I can
deliver.”
184
Clifford D. Simak
The senator rose slowly to his feet, his face a mask to hide the
excitement that was stirring in him. The excitement and the
naked surge of exultation. He kept his voice level.
“I’ll deliver that million before the week is over.”
Norton said: “I’ll start looking into things.”
On the street outside, the senator’s step took on a jauntiness it
had not known in years. He walked along briskly, flipping his
cane.
Those others, Carson and Galloway and Henderson, had
disappeared, exactly as he would have to disappear once he got
his extra hundred years. They had arranged to have their own
deaths announced and then had dropped from sight, living against
the day when immortality would be a thing to be had for the
simple asking.
Somewhere, somehow, they had got a new continuation, an
unauthorized continuation, since a renewal was not listed in the
records. Someone had arranged it for them. More than likely
Norton.
But they had bungled. They had tried to cover up their tracks
and had done no more than call attention to their absence.
In a thing like this, a man could not afford to blunder. A wise
man, a man who took the time to think things out, would not
make a blunder.
The senator pursed his flabby lips and whistled a snatch of
music.
Norton was a gouger, of course. Pretending that he couldn’t
make arrangements, pretending he was afraid of excommunication,
jacking up the price.
The senator grinned wryly. It would take almost every dime
he had, but it was worth the price.
He’d have to be careful, getting together that much money.
Some from one bank, some from another, collecting it piecemeal
by withdrawals and by cashing bonds, floating a few judicious
loans so there’d not be too many questions asked.
He bought a paper at the comer and hailed a cab. Settling back
in the seat, he creased the paper down its length and startd in on
column one. Another health contest. This time in Australia.
Health, thought the senator, they’re crazy on this health business.
Health centers. Health cults. Health clinics.
He skipped the story, moved on to column two.
The head said:
SIX SENATORS POOR BETS FOR RE-ELECTION
ETERNITY LOST
185
The senator snorted in disgust. One of the senators, of course,
would be himself.
He wadded up the paper and jammed it in his pocket.
Why should he care? Why knock himself out to retain a
senate seat he could never fill? He was going to grow young
again, get another chance at life. He would move to some far
part of the earth and be another man.
Another man. He thought about it and it was refreshing.
Dropping all the old dead wood of past association, all the
ancient accumulation of responsibilities.
Norton had taken on the job. Norton would deliver.
Mr. Miller: What l want to know is this: Where do we stop?
You give this life continuation to a man and he’ll want his
wife and kids to have it. And his wife will want her Aunt
Minnie to have it and the kids will want the family dog to
have it and the dog will want —
Chairman Leonard: You’re facetious, Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller: I don’t know what that big word means, mister. You
guys here in Geneva talk fancy with them six-bit words and
you get the people all balled up. It’s time the common
people got in a word of common sense.
From the Records of a hearing before the science sub¬
committee of the public policy committee of the World
House of Representatives.
“Frankly,” Norton told him, “it’s the first time I ever ran
across a thing I couldn’t fix. Ask me anything else you want to,
senator, and I’ll rig it up for you.”
The senator sat stricken. “You mean you couldn’t— But,
Norton, there was Dr. Carson and Galloway and Henderson.
Someone took care of them.”
Norton shook his head. “Not I. I never heard of them.”
“But someone did,” said the senator. “They disappeared—”
His voice trailed off and he slumped deeper in the chair and
the truth suddenly was plain—the truth he had failed to see.
A blind spot, he told himself. A blind spot!
They had disappeared and that was all he knew. They had
published their own deaths and had not died, but had disappeared.
He had assumed they had disappeared because they had got
an illegal continuation. But that was sheer wishful thinking.
There was no foundation for it, no fact that would support it.
There could be other reasons, he told himself, many other
186
Clifford D. Simak
reasons why a man would disappear and seek to cover up his
tracks with a death report.
But it had tied in so neatly!
They were continuators whose applications had not been
renewed. Exactly as he was a continuator whose application
would not be renewed.
They had dropped out of sight. Exactly as he would have to
drop from sight once he gained another lease on life.
It had tied in so neatly—and it had been all wrong.
“I tried every way I knew,” said Norton. “I canvassed every
source that might advance your name for continuation and they
laughed at me. It’s been tried before, you see, and there’s not a
chance of getting it put through. Once your original sponsor
drops you, you’re automatically cancelled out.
“I tried to sound out technicians who might take a chance,
but they’re incorruptible. They get paid off in added years for
loyalty and they’re not taking any chance of trading years for
dollars.”
“I guess that settles it,” the senator said wearily. “I should
have known.”
He heaved himself to his feet and faced Norton squarely.
“You are telling me the truth,” he pleaded. “You aren’t just
trying to jack up the price a bit.”
Norton stared at him, almost unbelieving. “Jack up the price!
Senator, if I had put this through. I’d have taken your last
penny. Want to know how much you’re worth? I can tell you
within a thousand dollars.”
He waved a hand at a row of filing cases ranged along the
wall.
“It’s all there, senator. You and all the other big shots.
Complete files on every one of you. When a man comes to me
with a deal like yours, I look in the files and strip him to the
bone.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any use of asking for some of my
money back?”
Norton shook his head. “Not a ghost. You took your gamble,
senator. You can’t even prove you paid me. And, beside, you
still have plenty left to last you the few years you have to live.”
The senator took a step toward the door, then turned back.
“Look, Norton, I can’t die! Not now. Just one more continua¬
tion and I’d be—”
The look on Norton’s face stopped him in his tracks. The
look he’d glimpsed on other faces at other times, but only
ETERNITY LOST
187
glimpsed. Now he stared at it—at the naked hatred of a man
whose life is short for the man whose life is long.
“Sure, you can die/’ said Norton. “You’re going to. You
can’t live forever. Who do you think you are!’’
The senator reached out a hand and clutched the desk.
“But you don’t understand.’’
“You’ve already lived ten times as long as I have lived,’’
said Norton, coldly, measuring each word, “and I hate your
guts for it. Get out of here, you sniveling old fool, before I
throw you out.’’
Dr. Barton: You may think that you would confer a boon on
humanity with life continuation, but I tell you, sir, that it
would be a curse. Life would lose its value and its meaning
if it went on forever, and if you have life continuation now,
you eventually must stumble on immortality. And when
that happens, sir, you will be compelled to set up boards of
review to grant the boon of death. The people, tired of life,
will storm your hearing rooms to plead for death.
Chairman Leonard: It would banish uncertainty and fear.
Dr. Barton: You are talking of the fear of death. The fear of
death, sir, is infantile.
Chairman Leonard: But there are benefits —
Dr. Barton: Benefits, yes. The benefit of allowing a scientist the
extra years he needs to complete a piece of research; a
composer an additional lifetime to complete a symphony.
Once the novelty wore off, men in general would accept
added life only under protest, only as a duty.
Chairman Leonard: You're not very practical-minded, doctor.
Dr. Barton: But / am. Extremely practical and down to earth.
Man must have newness. Man cannot be bored and live.
How much do you think there would be left to look for¬
ward to after the millionth woman, the billionth piece of
pumpkin pie?
From the Records of the hearing before the science
subcommittee of the public policy committee of the
World House of Representatives.
So Norton hated him.
As all people of normal lives must hate, deep within their
souls, the lucky ones whose lives went on and on.
A hatred deep and buried, most of the time buried. But
sometimes breaking out, as it had broken out of Norton.
188
Clifford D. Simak
Resentment, tolerated because of the gently, skillfully fos¬
tered hope that those whose lives went on might some day make
it possible that the lives of all, barring violence or accident or
incurable disease, might go on as long as one would wish.
I can understand it now, thought the senator, for I am one of
them. I am one of those whose lives will not continue to go on,
and I have even fewer years than the most of them.
He stood before the window in the deepening dusk and saw
the lights come out and the day die above the unbelievably blue
waters of the far-famed lake.
Beauty came to him as he stood there watching, beauty that
had gone unnoticed through all the later years. A beauty and a
softness and a feeling of being one with the city lights and the
last faint gleam of day above the darkening waters.
Fear? The senator admitted it.
Bitterness? Of course.
Yet, despite the fear and bitterness, the window held him
with the scene it framed.
Earth and sky and water, he thought. I am one with them.
Death has made me one with them. For death brings one back
to the elementals, to the soil and trees, to the clouds and sky
and the sun dying in the welter of its blood in the crimson west.
This is the price we pay, he thought, that the race must pay,
for its life eternal—that we may not be able to assess in their
true value the things that should be dearest to us; for a thing that
has*no ending, a thing that goes on forever, must have decreas¬
ing value.
Rationalization, he accused himself. Of course, you’re
rationalizing. You want another hundred years as badly as you
ever did. You want a chance at immortality. But you can’t have
it and you trade eternal life for a sunset seen across a lake and it
is well you can. It is a blessing that you can.
The senator made a rasping sound within his throat.
Behind him the telephone came to sudden life and he swung
around. It chirred at him again. Feet pattered down the hall and
the senator called out: “I’ll get it, Otto.’’
He lifted the receiver. “New York calling,’’ said the operator.
“Senator Leonard, please.’’
“This is Leonard.”
Another voice broke in. “Senator, this is Gibbs.”
“Yes,” said the senator. “The executioner.”
“I called you,’’ said Gibbs, “to talk about the election.”
“What election?”
ETERNITY LOST
189
“The one here in North America. The one you’re running in.
Remember?”
“I am an old man,” said the senator, “and I’m about to die.
I’m not interested in elections.”
Gibbs practically chattered. “But you have to be. What’s the
matter with you, senator? You have to do something. Make
some speeches, make a statement, come home and stump the
country. The party can’t do it all alone. You have to do some of
it yourself.”
“I will do something,” declared the senator. “Yes, I think
that finally I’ll do something.”
He hung up and walked to the writing desk, snapped on the
light. He got paper out of a drawer and took a pen out of his
pocket.
The telephone went insane and he paid it no attention. It rang
on and on and finally Otto came and answered.
“New York calling, sir,” he said.
The senator shook his head and he heard Otto talking softly
and the phone did not ring again.
The senator wrote:
To Whom It May Concern:
Then crossed it out.
He wrote:
A Statement to the World:
And crossed it out.
He wrote:
A Statement by Senator Homer Leonard:
He crossed that out, too.
He wrote:
Five centuries ago the people of the world gave into the
hands of a few trusted men and women the gift of continued life
in the hope and belief that they would work to advance the day
when longer life spans might be made possible for the entire
population.
From time to time, life continuation has been granted addi¬
tional men and women, always with the implied understanding
that the gift was made under the same conditions—that the
persons so favored should work against the day when each
inhabitant of the entire world might enter upon a heritage of
near-eternity.
Through the years some of us have carried that trust forward
and have lived with it and cherished it and bent every effort
toward its fulfillment.
Some of us have not.
190
Clifford D. Simak
Upon due consideration and searching examination of my
own status in this regard , / have at length decided that I no
longer can accept further extension of the gift.
Human dignity requires that I be able to meet my fellow man
upon the street or in the byways of the world without flinching
from him. This I could not do should I continue to accept a gift
to which I have no claim and which is denied to other men.
The senator signed his name, neatly, carefully, without the
usual flourish.
“There,” he said, speaking aloud in the silence of the night-
filled room, “that will hold them for a while.”
Feet padded and he turned around.
“It’s long past your usual bedtime, sir,” said Otto.
The senator rose clumsily and his aching bones protested. Old, he
thought. Growing old again. And it would be so easy to start over,
to regain his youth and live another lifetime. Just the nod of some¬
one’s head, just a single pen stroke and he would be young again.
“This statement, Otto,” he said. “Please give it to the press.”
“Yes, sir,” said Otto. He took the paper, held it gingerly.
“Tonight,” said the senator.
“Tonight, sir? It is rather late.”
“Nevertheless, I want to issue it tonight.”
“It must be important, sir.”
“It’s my resignation,” said the senator.
“Your resignation! From the senate, sir!”
“No,” said the senator. “From life.”
Mr. Michaelson: As a churchman , I cannot think otherwise than
that the proposal now before you gentlemen constitutes a
perversion of Goffs law. It is not within the province of
man to say a man may live beyond his allotted time.
Chairman Leonard: I might ask you this: How is one to know
when a man's allotted time has come to an end? Medicine
has prolonged the lives of many persons. Would you call a
physician a perverter of God's law?
Mr. Michaelson: It has become apparent through the testimony
given here that the eventual aim of continuing research is im¬
mortality. Surety you can see that physical immortality does not
square with the Christian concept. I tell you this , sir: You
can't fool God and get away with it.
From the Records of a hearing before the science subcom¬
mittee of the public policy committee of the World House
of Representatives.
ETERNITY LOST
191
Chess is a game of logic.
But likewise a game of ethics.
You do not shout and you do not whistle, nor bang the pieces
on the board, nor twiddle your thumbs, nor move a piece then
take it back again. When you’re beaten, you admit it. You do
not force your opponent to carry on the game to absurd lengths.
You resign and start another game if there is time to play one.
Otherwise, you just resign and you do it with all the good grace
possible. You do not knock all the pieces to the floor in anger.
You do not get up abruptly and stalk out of the room. You do
not reach across the board and punch your opponent in the nose.
When you play chess you are, or you are supposed to be, a
gentleman.
The senator lay wide-awake, staring at the ceiling.
You do not reach across the board and punch your opponent in
the nose. You do not knock the pieces to the floor.
But this isn’t chess, he told himself, arguing with himself.
This isn’t chess; this is life and death. A dying thing is not a
gentleman. It does not curl up quietly and die of the hurt
inflicted. It backs into a corner and it fights, it lashes back and
does all the hurt it can.
And I am hurt. I am hurt to death.
And I have lashed back. I have lashed back, most horribly.
They’ll not be able to walk down the street again, not ever
again, those gentlemen who passed the sentence on me. For they
have no more claim to continued life than I and the people now
will know it. And the people will see to it that they do not get it.
I will die, but when I go down I’ll pull the others with me.
They’ll know I pulled them down, down with me into the pit of
death. That’s the sweetest part of all—they’ll know who pulled
them down and they won’t be able to say a word about it. They
can’t even contradict the noble things I said.
Someone in the comer said, some voice from some other time
and place: You* re no gentleman, senator. You fight a dirty fight.
Sure I do, said the senator. They fought dirty first. And
politics always was a dirty game.
Remember all that fine talk you dished out to Lee the other
day?
That was the other day, snapped the senator.
You* ll never be able to look a chessman in the face again, said
the voice in the comer.
I’ll be able to look my fellow men in the face, however, said
the senator.
Will you? asked the voice.
192
Clifford D. Simak
And that, of course, was the question. Would he?
I don’t care, the senator cried desperately. I don’t care what
happens. They played a lousy trick on me. They can’t get away
with it. I’ll fix their clocks for them. I’ll—
Sure, you will, said the voice, mocking.
Go away, shrieked the senator. Go away and leave me. Let
me be alone.
You are alone, said the thing in the comer. You are more
alone than any man has ever been before.
Chairman Leonard: You represent an insurance company, do you
not, Mr. Markely? A big insurance company.
Mr. Markely: That is correct.
Chairman Leonard: And every time a person dies, it costs your
company money?
Mr. Markely: Well, you might put it that way if you wished,
although it is scarcely the case —
Chairman Leonard: You do have to pay out benefits on deaths,
don*t you?
Mr. Markely: Why, yes, of course we do.
Chairman Leonard: Then / can*t understand your opposition to
life continuation. If there were fewer deaths, you*d have to
pay fewer benefits.
Mr. Markely: All very true, sir. But if people had reason to
believe they would live virtually forever, they*d buy no life
insurance.
Chairman Leonard: Oh, I see. So that*s the way it is
From the Records of a hearing before the science subcom¬
mittee of the public policy committee of the World House
of Representatives.
The senator awoke. He had not been dreaming, but it was
almost as if he had awakened from a bad dream—or awakened to
a bad dream—and he struggled to go back to sleep again, to gain
the Nirvana of unawareness, to shut out the harsh reality of
existence, to dodge the shame of knowing who and what he was.
But there was someone stirring in the room, and someone
spoke to him and he sat upright in bed, stung to wakefulness by
the happiness and something else that was almost worship which
the voice held.
“It’s wonderful, sir,’’ said Otto. “There have been phone
calls all night long. And the telegrams and radiograms still are
stacking up.’’
ETERNITY LOST
193
The senator rubbed his eyes with pudgy fists.
“Phone calls, Otto? People sore at me?”
“Some of them were, sir. Terribly angry, sir. But not too
many of them. Most of them were happy and wanted to tell you
what a great thing you’d done. But I told them you were tired
and I could not waken you.’’
“Great thing?’’ said the senator. “What great thing have I
done?’’
“Why, sir, giving up life continuation. One man said to tell
you it was the greatest example of moral courage the world had
ever known. He said all the common people would bless you for
it. Those were his very words. He was very solemn, sir.’’
The senator swung his feet to the floor, sat on the edge of the
bed, scratching at his ribs.
It was strange, he told himself, how a thing would turn out
sometimes. A heel at bedtime and a hero in the morning.
“Don’t you see, sir,’’ said Otto, “you have made yourself
one of the common people, one of the short-lived people. No
one has ever done a thing like that before.’’
“I was one of the common people,’’ said the senator, “long
before I wrote that statement. And I didn’t make myself one of
them. I was forced to become one of them, much against my
will.”
But Otto, in his excitement, didn’t seem to hear.
He rattled on: “The newspapers are full of it, sir. It’s the
biggest news in years. The political writers are chuckling over it.
They’re calling it the smartest political move that was ever
pulled. They say that before you made the announcement you
didn’t have a chance of being re-elected senator and now, they
say, you can be elected president if you just say the word.”
The senator sighed. “Otto,” he said, “please hand me my
pants. It is cold in here.”
Otto handed him his trousers. “There’s a newspaperman wait¬
ing in the study, sir. I held all the others off, but this one
sneaked in the back way. You know him, sir, so I let him wait.
He is Mr. Lee.”
“I’ll see him,” said the senator.
So it was a smart political move, was it? Well, maybe so, but
after a day or so, even the surprised political experts would begin
to wonder about the logic of a man literally giving up his life to
be re-elected to a senate seat.
Of course the common herd would love it, but he had not done
it for applause. Although, so long as the people insisted upon
194 Clifford D. Simak
thinking of him as great and noble, it was all right to let them go
on thinking so.
The senator jerked his tie straight and buttoned his coat. He
went into the study and Lee was waiting for him.
“I suppose you want an interview,” said the senator. “Want
to know why I did this thing.”
Lee shook his head. “No, senator, I have something else.
Something you should know about. Remember our talk last
week? About the disappearances.”
The senator nodded.
“Well, I have something else. You wouldn’t tell me anything
last week, but maybe now you will. I’ve checked, senator, and
I’ve found this—the health winners are disappearing, too. More
than eighty percent of those who participated in the finals of the
last ten years have disappeared.”
“I don’t understand,” said the senator.
“They’re going somewhere,” said Lee. “Something’s happen¬
ing to them. Something’s happening to two classes of our people—
the continuators and the healthiest youngsters.”
“Wait a minute,” gasped the senator. “Wait a minute, Mr.
Lee.”
He groped his way to the desk, grasped its edge and lowered
himself into a chair.
“There is something wrong, senator?” asked Lee.
“Wrong?” mumbled the senator. “Yes, there must be some¬
thing wrong.”
“They’ve found living space,” said Lee, triumphantly. “That’s
it, isn’t it? They’ve found living space and they’re sending out
the pioneers.”
The senator shook his head. “I don’t know, Lee. I have not
been informed. Check Extrasolar Research. They’re the only
ones who know—and they wouldn’t tell you.”
Lee grinned at him. “Good day, senator,” he said. “Thanks
so much for helping.”
Dully, the senator watched him go.
Living space? Of course, that was it.
They had found living space and Extrasolar Research was
sending out handpicked pioneers to prepare the way. It would
take years of work and planning before the discovery could be
announced. For once announced, world government must be
ready to confer immortality on a mass production basis, must
have ships available to carry out the hordes to the far, new
worlds. A premature announcement would bring psychological
ETERNITY LOST
195
and economic disruption that would make the government a
shambles. So they would work very quietly, for they must work
quietly.
His eyes found the little stack of letters on one comer of the
desk and he remembered, with a shock of guilt, that he had
meant to read them. He had promised Otto that he would and
then he had forgotten.
I keep forgetting all the time, said the senator. I forget to read
my paper and I forget to read my letters and I forget that some
men are loyal and morally honest instead of slippery and slick.
And I indulge in wishful thinking and that's the worst of all.
Continuators and health champions disappearing. Sure, they're
disappearing. They’re headed for new worlds and immortality.
And I ... I ... if only I had kept my big mouth shut—
The phone chirped and he picked it up.
“This is Sutton at Extrasolar Research," said an angry voice.
“Yes, Dr. Sutton," said the senator. “It’s nice of you to
call.”
“I’m calling in regard to the invitation that we sent you last
week," said Sutton. “In view of your statement last night,
which we feel very keenly is an unjust criticism, we are with¬
drawing it."
“Invitation," said the senator. “Why, I didn’t—"
“What I can’t understand," said Sutton, “is why, with the
invitation in your pocket, you should have acted as you did."
“But," said the senator, “but, doctor—’’
“Good-by, senator," said Sutton.
Slowly the senator hung up. With a fumbling hand, he reached
out and picked up the stack of letters.
It was the third one down. The return address was Extrasolar
Research and it had been registered and sent special delivery and
it was marked both PERSONAL and IMPORTANT.
The letter slipped out of the senator’s trembling fingers and
fluttered to the floor. He did not pick it up.
It was too late now, he knew, to do anything about it.
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN
by C.M. Kornbluth [1923-1958)
Startling Stories, July
One of the great things about Cyril Kornbluth is that his
stories stand the test of time, and this little gem is a perfect
example of this virtue. It also conveys the essence of the
attitude he brought to almost all his fiction—an intense cyni¬
cism that was an extension of himself. When he died at the
age of thirty-five he had been a professional writer for nearly
twenty years. What would he have said about the 1960s and
beyond? It is a tragedy that we will never know. However, he
left us a great deal, and will begin to appear frequently in
future volumes in this series. — M.H.G.
(I like to use quotations or well-known phrases, or parts of
them, for titles, and so do others.
In Philosophy of History, published in 1832, and written
by the German philosopher, Georg W. F. Hegel, it is stated,
‘'What experience and history teach is this—that people and
governments never have learned anything from history, or
acted on principles deduced from it .''
And in 1903, George Bernard Shaw, in The Revolutionist’s
Handbook, deliberately paraphrasing Hegel, said, “We learn
from history that we learn nothing from history. ” The usual
form the quotation takes today is “The only thing we learn
from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.”
This is just a little bit of pedantry on my part. Now go
ahead and read “The Only Thing We Learn” by C. M.
Kornbluth. — LA.)
The Professor, though he did not know the actor’s phrase for it,
was counting the house—peering through a spyhole in the door
196
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN
197
through which he would in a moment appear before the class. He
was pleased with what he saw. Tier after tier of young people,
ready with notebooks and styli, chattering tentatively, glancing
at the door against which his nose was flattened, waiting for the
pleasant interlude known as ‘‘Archaeo-Literature 203” to begin.
The professor stepped back, smoothed his tunic, crooked four
books in his left elbow and made his entrance. Four swift strides
brought him to the lectern and, for the thousandth-odd time, he
impassively swept the lecture hall with his gaze. Then he gave a
wry little smile. Inside, for the thousandth-odd time, he was
nagged by the irritable little thought that the lectern really ought
to be a foot or so higher.
The irritation did not show. He was out to win the audience,
and he did. A dead silence, the supreme tribute, gratified him.
Imperceptibly, the lights of the lecture hall began to dim and the
light on the lectern to brighten.
He spoke.
“Young gentlemen of the Empire, I ought to warn you that
this and the succeeding lectures will be most subversive.”
There was a little rustle of incomprehension from the audience—
but by then the lectern light was strong enough to show the
twinkling smile about his eyes that belied his stem mouth, and
agreeable chuckles sounded in the gathering darkness of the
tiered seats. Glow-lights grew bright gradually at the students*
tables, and they adjusted their notebooks in the narrow ribbons
of illumination. He waited for the small commotion to subside.
“Subversive—’* He gave them a link to cling to. “Subversive
because I shall make every effort to tell both sides of our ancient
beginnings with every resource of archaeology and with every
clue my diligence has discovered in our epic literature.
“There were two sides, you know—difficult though it may be
to believe that if we judge by the Old Epic alone—such epics as
the noble and tempestuous Chant of Remd, the remaining frag¬
ments of KralVs Voyage , or the gory and rather out-of-date
Battle for the Ten Suns.” He paused while styli scribbled across
the notebook pages.
“The Middle Epic is marked, however, by what I might call
the rediscovered ethos.” From his voice, every student knew
that that phrase, surer than death and taxes, would appear on an
examination paper. The styli scribbled. “By this I mean an
awakening of fellow-feeling with the Home Suns People, which
had once been filial loyalty to them when our ancestors were few
and pioneers, but which turned into contempt when their num¬
bers grew. v
198
C. M. Kornbluth
4 ‘The Middle Epic writers did not despise the Home Suns
People, as did the bards of the Old Epic. Perhaps this was
because they did not have to—since their long war against the
Home Suns was drawing to a victorious close.
“Of the New Epic I shall have little to say. It was a literary
fad, a pose, and a silly one. Written within historic times, the
some two score pseudo-epics now moulder in their cylinders,
where they belong. Our ripening civilization could not with
integrity work in the epic form, and the artistic failures produced
so indicate. Our genius turned to the lyric and to the unabashedly
romantic novel.
“So much, for the moment, of literature. What contribution,
you must wonder, have archaeological studies to make in an
investigation of the wars from which our ancestry emerged?
“Archaeology offers—one—a check in historical matter in the
epics—confirming or denying. Two—it provides evidence glossed
over in the epics—for artistic or patriotic reasons. Three—it
provides evidence which has been lost, owing to the fragmentary
nature of some of the early epics.”
All this he fired at them crisply, enjoying himself. Let them
not think him a dreamy litterateur, nor, worse, a flat precisionist,
but let them be always a little off-balance before him, never
knowing what came next, and often wondering, in class and out.
The styli paused after heading Three.
“We shall examine first, by our archaeo-literary technique,
the second book of the Chant of Remd. As the selected youth of
the Empire, you know much about it, of course—much that is
false, some that is true and a great deal that is irrelevant. You
know that Book One hurls us into the middle of things, aboard
ship with Algan and his great captain, Remd, on their way from
the triumph over a Home Suns stronghold, the planet Telse. We
watch Remd on his diversionary action that splits the Ten Suns
Fleet into two halves. But before we see the destruction of those
halves by the Horde of Algan, we are told in Book Two of the
battle for Telse.”
He opened one of his books on the lectern, swept the amphithe¬
ater again and read sonorously.
“Then battle broke
And high the blinding blast
Sight-searing leaped
While folk in fear below
Cowered in caverns
From the wrath of Remd—
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN
199
“Or, in less sumptuous language, one fission bomb—or a
stick of time-on-target bombs—was dropped. An unprepared and
disorganized populace did not take the standard measure of
dispersing, but huddled foolishly to await Algan’s gunfighters
and the death they brought.
“One of the things you believe because you have seen them in
notes to elementary-school editions of Remd is that Telse was the
fourth planet of the star, Sol. Archaeology denies it by establish¬
ing that the fourth planet—actually called Marse, by the way—
was in those days weather-roofed at least, and possibly atmosphere-
roofed as well. As potential warriors, you know that one does
not waste fissionable material on a roof, and there is no mention
of chemical explosives being used to crack the roof. Marse,
therefore, was not the locale of Remd , Book Two.
“Which planet was? The answer to that has been established
by X-radar, differential decay analyses, video-coring and every
other resource of those scientists still quaintly called ‘diggers.*
We know and can prove that Telse was the third planet of Sol.
So much for the opening of the attack. Let us jump to Canto
Three, the Storming of the Dynastic Palace.
“Imperial purple wore they
Fresh from the feast
Grossly gorged
They sought to slay—
“And so on. Now, as I warned you, Remd is of the Old Epic,
and makes no pretense at fairness. The unorganized huddling of
Telse’s population was read as cowardice instead of poor A.R.P.
The same is tme of the Third Canto. Video-cores show on the
site of the palace a hecatomb of dead in once-purple livery, but
also shows impartially that they were not particularly gorged
and that digestion of their last meals had been well advanced.
They didn't give such a bad accounting of themselves, either.
I hesitate to guess, but perhaps they accounted for one of our
ancestors apiece and were simply outnumbered. The study is not
complete.
“That much we know.” The professor saw they were tiring of
the terse scientist and shifted gears. “But if the veil of time were
rent that shrouds the years between us and the Home Suns
People, how much more would we learn? Would we despise the
Home Suns People as our frontiersman ancestors did, or would
we cry: ‘This is our spiritual home—this world of rank and
200
C. M . Kombluth
order, this world of formal verse and exquisitely patterned
arts’?”
If the veil of time were rent—?
We can try to rend it . . .
Wing Commander Arris heard the clear jangle of the radar net
alarm as he was dreaming about a fish. Struggling out of his
too-deep, too-soft bed, he stepped into a purple singlet, buckled
on his Sam Browne belt with its holstered .45 automatic and
tried to read the radar screen. Whatever had set it off was either
too small or too distant to register on the five-inch C.R.T.
He rang for his aide, and checked his appearance in a wall-
mirror while waiting. His space tan was beginning to fade, he
saw, and made a mental note to get it renewed at the parlor. He
stepped into the corridor as Evan, his aide, trotted up—younger,
browner, thinner, but the same officer type that made the Service
what it was. Arris thought with satisfaction.
Evan gave him a bone-cracking salute, which he returned.
They set off for the elevator that whisked them down to a large,
chilly, dark underground room where faces were greenly lit by
radar screens and the lights of plotting tables. Somebody yelled
“Attention!” and the tecks snapped. He gave them “At ease”
and took the brisk salute of the senior teck, who reported to him
in flat, machine-gun delivery:
4 ‘Object-becoming-visible-on-primary-screen-sir. ’ ’
He studied the sixty-inch disk for several seconds before he
spotted the intercepted particle. It was coming in fast from
zenith, growing while he watched.
“Assuming it’s now traveling at maximum, how long will it
be before it’s within striking range?” he asked the teck.
“Seven hours, sir.”
“The interceptors at Idlewild alerted?”
“Yessir.”
Arris turned on a phone that connected with Interception. The
boy at Interception knew the face that appeared on its screen,
and was already capped with a crash helmet.
“Go ahead and take him, Eft-id,” said the wing commander.
“Yessir!” and a punctilious salute, the boy’s pleasure plain at
being known by name and a great deal more at being on die way
to a fight that might be first-class.
Arris cut him off before the boy could detect a smile that was
forming on his face. He turned from the pale lunar glow of the
sixty-incher to enjoy it. Those kids—when every meteor was an
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN
201
invading dreadnaught, when every ragged scouting ship from
the rebels was an armada!
He watched Efrid’s squadron soar off on the screen and then
he retreated to a darker comer. This was his post until the meteor
or scout or whatever it was got taken care of. Evan joined him,
and they silently studied the smooth, disciplined functioning of
the plot room, Arris with satisfaction and Evan doubtless with
the same. The aide broke silence, asking:
“Do you suppose it’s a Frontier ship, sir?” He caught the
wing commander’s look and hastily corrected himself: “I mean
rebel ship, sir, of course.”
“Then you should have said so. Is that what the junior officers
generally call those scoundrels?”
Evan conscientiously cast his mind back over the last few
junior messes and reported unhappily: “I’m afraid we do, sir.
We seem to have got into the habit.”
“I shall write a memorandum about it. How do you account
for that very peculiar habit?”
“Well, sir, they do have something like a fleet, and they did
take over the Regulus Cluster, didn’t they?”
What had got into this incredible fellow, Arris wondered in
amazement. Why, the thing was self-evident! They had a few
ships—accounts differed as to how many—and they had, doubt¬
less by raw sedition, taken over some systems temporarily.
He turned from his aide, who sensibly became interested
in a screen and left with a murmured excuse to study it very
closely.
The brigands had certainly knocked together some ramshackle
league or other, but— The wing commander wondered briefly if
it could last, shut the horrid thought from his head, and set
himself to composing mentally a stiff memorandum that would
be posted in the junior officer’s mess and put an end to this
absurd talk.
His eyes wandered to the sixty-incher, where he saw the
interceptor squadron climbing nicely toward the particle—which,
he noticed, had become three particles. A low crooning dis¬
tracted him. Was one of the tecks singing at work? It couldn’t
be!
It wasn’t. An unsteady shape wandered up in the darkness,
murmuring a song and exhaling alcohol. He recognized the Chief
Archivist, Glen.
“This is Service country, mister,” he told Glen.
“Hullo, Arris,” the round little civilian said, peering at him.
202
C. M. Kornbluth
“I come down here regularly—regularly against regulations—to
wear off my regular irregularities with the wine bottle. That’s all
right, isn’t it?”
He was drunk and argumentative. Arris felt hemmed in. Glen
couldn’t be talked into leaving without loss of dignity to the
wing commander, and he couldn’t be chucked out because he
was writing a biography of the chamberlain and could, for the
time being, have any head in the palace for the asking. Arris sat
down unhappily, and Glen plumped down beside him.
The little man asked him.
“Is that a fleet from the Frontier League?” He pointed to the
big screen. Arris didn’t look at his face, but felt that Glen was
grinning maliciously.
‘T know of no organization called the Frontier League,” Arris
said. “If you are referring to the brigands who have recently
been operating in Galactic East, you could at least call them by
their proper names.” Really, he thought—civilians!
“So sorry. But the brigands should have the Regulus Cluster
by now, shouldn’t they?” he asked, insinuatingly.
This was serious—a grave breach of security. Arris turned to
the little man.
“Mister, I have no authority to command you,” he said
measuredly. “Furthermore, 1 understand you are enjoying a
temporary eminence in the non-service world which would make
it very difficult for me to—ah—tangle with you. I shall therefore
refer only to your altruism. How did you find out about the
Regulus Cluster?”
“Eloquent!” murmured the little man, smiling happily. “I got
it from Rome.”
Arris searched his memory. “You mean Squadron Commander
Romo broke security? I can’t believe it!”
“No, commander. I mean Rome—a place—a time—a civil¬
ization. I got it also from Babylon, Assyria, the Mogul Raj—
every one of them. You don’t understand me, of course.”
“I understand that you’re trifling with Service security and
that you’re a fat little, malevolent, worthless drone and scribbler!”
“Oh, commander!” protested the archivist. “I’m not so little!”
He wandered away, chuckling.
Arris wished he had the shooting of him, and tried to explore
the chain of secrecy for a weak link. He was tired and bored by
this harping on the Fron—on the brigands.
His aide tentatively approached him. “Interceptors in striking
range, sir,” he murmured.
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN
203
“Thank you,” said the wing commander, genuinely grateful
to be back in the clean, etched-line world of the Service and out
of that blurred, water-color, civilian land where long-dead
Syrians apparently retailed classified matter to nasty little drunken
warts who had no business with it. Arris confronted the sixty-
incher. The particle that had become three particles was now—he
counted—eighteen particles. Big ones. Getting bigger.
He did not allow himself emotion, but turned to the plot on the
interceptor squadron.
“Set up Lunar relay,” he ordered.
“Yessir.”
Half the plot room crew bustled silently and efficiently about
the delicate job of applied relativistic physics that was iunar
relay.’ He knew that the palace power plant could take it for a
few minutes, and he wanted to see. If he could not believe radar
pips, he might believe a video screen.
On the great, green circle, the eighteen—now twenty-four—
particles neared the thirty-six smaller particles that were inter¬
ceptors, led by the eager young Efrid.
“Testing Lunar relay, sir,” said the chief teck.
The wing commander turned to a twelve-inch screen. Un¬
obtrusively, behind him, tecks jockeyed for position. The picture
on the screen was something to see. The chief let mercury fill a
thick-walled, ceramic tank. There was a sputtering and contact
was made.
“Well done,” said Arris. “Perfect seeing.”
He saw, upper left, a globe of ships—what ships! Some
were Service jobs, with extra turrets plastered on them wherever
there was room. Some were orthodox freighters, with the
same porcupine-bristle of weapons. Some were obviously
home-made crates, hideously ugly—and as heavily armed as the
others.
Next to him, Arris heard his aide murmur, “It’s all wrong,
sir. They haven’t got any pick-up boats. They haven’t got
any hospital ships. What happens when one of them gets shot
up?”
“Just what ought to happen, Evan,” snapped the wing
commander. “They float in space until they desiccate in their
suits. Or if they get grappled inboard with a boat hook, they
don’t get any medical care. As I told you, they’re brigands,
without decency even to care for their own.” He enlarged on the
theme. “Their morale must be insignificant compared with our
men’s. When the Service goes into action, every rating and teck
204
C. M. Kornbluth
knows he’ll be cared for if he’s hurt. Why, if we didn’t have
pick-up boats and hospital ships the men wouldn’t—” He almost
finished it with “fight,” but thought, and lamely ended—
“wouldn’t like it.”
Evan nodded, wonderingly, and crowded his chief a little as
he craned his neck for a look at the screen.
“Get the hell away from here!” said the wing commander in a
restrained yell, and Evan got.
The interceptor squadron swam into the field—a sleek, deadly
needle of vessels in perfect alignment, with its little cloud of
pick-ups trailing, and farther astern a white hospital ship with the
ancient red cross.
The contact was immediate and shocking. One of the rebel
ships lumbered into the path of the interceptors, spraying fire
from what seemed to be as many points as a man has pores. The
Service ships promptly riddled it and it should have drifted
away—but it didn’t. It kept on fighting. It rammed an interceptor
with a crunch that must have killed every man before the first
bulwark, but aft of the bulwark the ship kept fighting.
It took a torpedo portside and its plumbing drifted through space
in a tangle. Still the starboard side kept squirting fire. Isolated
weapon blisters fought on while they were obviously cut off from
the rest of the ship. It was a pounded tangle of wreckage, and it had
destroyed two interceptors, crippled two more, and kept fighting.
Finally, it drifted away, under feeble jets of power. Two more
of the fantastic rebel fleet wandered into action, but the wing
commander’s horrified eyes were on the first pile of scrap. It was
going somewhere —
The ship neared the thin-skinned, unarmored, gleaming hospi¬
tal vessel, rammed it amidships, square in one of the red crosses,
and then blew itself up, apparently with everything left in its
powder magazine, taking the hospital ship with it.
The sickened wing commander would never have recognized
what he had seen as it was told in a later version, thus:
“The crushing course they took
And nobly knew
Their death undaunted
By heroic blast
The hospital’s host
They dragged to doom
Hail! Men without mercy
From the far frontier!”
THE ONLY THING WE LEARN
205
Lunar relay flickered out as overloaded fuses flashed into
vapor. Arris distractedly paced back to the dark comer and sank
into a chair.
“I’m sorry,” said the voice of Glen next to him, sounding
quite sincere. “No doubt it was quite a shock to you.”
“Not to you?” asked Arris bitterly.
“Not to me.”
“Then how did they do it?” the wing commander asked the
civilian in a low, desperate whisper. “They don’t even wear
.45’s. Intelligence says their enlisted men have hit their officers
and got away with it. They elect ship captains! Glen, what does
it all mean?”
“It means,” said the fat little man with a timbre of doom in
his voice, “that they’ve returned. They always have. They al¬
ways will. You see, commander, there is always somewhere a
wealthy, powerful city, or nation, or world. In it are those whose
blood is not right for a wealthy, powerful place. They must seek
danger and overcome it. So they go out—on the marshes, in the
desert, on the tundra, the planets, or the stars. Being strong, they
grow stronger by fighting the tundra, the planets or the stars.
They—they change. They sing new songs. They know new
heroes. And then, one day, they return to their old home.
“They return to the wealthy, powerful city, or nation or
world. They fight its guardians as they fought the tundra, the
planets or the stars—a way that strikes terror to the heart. Then
they sack the city, nation or world and sing great, ringing sagas
of their deeds. They always have. Doubtless they always will.”
“But what shall we do?”
“We shall cower, I suppose, beneath the bombs they drop
on us, and we shall die, some bravely, some not, defending
the palace within a very few hours. But you will have your
revenge.”
“How?” asked the wing commander, with haunted eyes.
The fat little man giggled and whispered in the officer’s ear.
Arris irritably shrugged it off as a bad joke. He didn’t believe it.
As he died, drilled through the chest a few hours later by one of
Algan’s gunfighters he believed it even less.
The professor’s lecture was drawing to a close. There was
time for only one more joke to send his students away happy. He
was about to spring it when a messenger handed him two slips of
paper. He raged inwardly at his ruined exit and poisonously read
from them:
206
C. M . Kombluth
“I have been asked to make two announcements. One, a
bulletin from General Sleg’s force. He reports that the so-called
Outland Insurrection is being brought under control and that
there is no cause for alarm. Two, the gentlemen who are mem¬
bers of the S.O.T.C. will please report to the armory at 1375
hours—whatever that may mean—for blaster inspection. The
class is dismissed.”
Petulantly, he swept from the lectern and through the door.
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
by Philip MacDonald (1896-1981?)
The Magazine of Fantasy , Fall later known
as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
The late Philip MacDonald was the grandson of the fa¬
mous Scottish poet George MacDonald and a highly regarded
Hollywood screenwriter and detective novelist. Perhaps his
most famous film work was his script for Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca (1940), but he also wrote a number of Mr. Moto and
Charlie Chan films. His detective character Anthony Gethryn,
introduced in 1924, appeared in some ten novels.
MacDonald’s work was partially lost in the large shadows
of the two other great writers with the same last name—John
D. and Ross MacDonald—which is a shame, because he was
a major talent. Mystery critics maintain that his short stories
are even better than his novels; “ Private—Keep Out” was
unfortunately one of only a handful of works he published
in the sf field.
And we can’t allow another moment to go by without
welcoming The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to
this series. Few realized it at the time, but Anthony Boucher
and J. Francis McComas had launched what many * believe
to be the finest sf magazine of all time, one that is happily
still with us today. — M.H.G.
*Not all , Marty. (I.A.)
(They say that earthquakes are extremely terrifying, even if
you are in no immediate danger of having anything fall on
you; even if you are in an open field and no fissures form;
even if it only lasts for a minute or so.
1 have never experienced an earthquake, but I think I can
imagine the sensation and can appreciate what it is that is so
207
208
Philip MacDonald
terrifying. It is the fact that the solid earth is moving, shaking,
vibrating. We are so used to the ground we walk upon being
the motionless substratum on which all exists, we take it so
for granted, that when that basic assumption is negated for
even a short time, we feel the terror of chaos.
And yet there are assumptions that are more basic still ,
and if we were to get the notion that these, too, might vanish,
our terror would be past description. “ Private—Keep Out”
by Philip MacDonald deals with such a disruption and you
will not be human if you don't feel a frisson of horror at the
last sentence.
Marty, by the way, wondered if this story was really sci¬
ence fiction. My response was that it most certainly was; and
not only that but that / liked it better than I did any other
story in the book—including mine. — LA.)
The world goes mad—and people tend to put the cause of its
sickness down to Man; sometimes even to one particular little
man. Perhaps, only a few months ago, I would have thought like
this myself about the existing outbreak of virulent insanity—but
now I can’t.
I can’t because of something which happened to me a little
while ago. I was in Southern California, working at Paramount.
Most days, I used to get to the studio about ten and leave at five
forty-five, but on this particular evening—it was Wednesday, the
18th of June—I was a little late getting away.
1 went out through the front hall and hurried across the street
to the garage. The entrance is a tunnelled archway. It was fairly
dark in there—and I bumped square into a man who’d either
been on his way out or standing there in the deepest part of the
shadow. The latter didn't seem probable, but 1 had an odd sort of
feeling that that was just what he had been doing.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was . . .” I cut myself off short and
stared. I recognized him, but what with the semi-darkness and
the funny, stiff way he was standing and looking at me, I
couldn’t place him. It wasn’t one of those half-memories of
having once met someone somewhere. It was a definite, full-
fledged memory which told me this man had been a friend
closely knit into my particular life-pattern, and not so long ago.
He turned away—and something about the movement slipped
the loose memory-cog back into place. It was Charles Moffat—
Charles who’d been a friend for fifteen years; Charles whom I
hadn’t seen or heard about since he’d gone east in a mysterious
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
209
hurry two years ago; Charles whom I was delighted to see again;
Charles who’d changed amazingly; Charles, as I realized with a
shock, who must have been very ill.
I shouted his name and leapt after him and grabbed him by the
arm and swung him around to face me.
“You old sucker!” I said. “Don’t you know me?”
He smiled with his mouth but nothing happened to his eyes.
He said:
“How are you? I thought you’d forgotten me.”
It should have been a jest—but it wasn’t. I felt . . . uncom¬
fortable.
“It’s so damn’ dark in here!” I said, and dragged him out into
the sunshine of the street. His arm felt very thin.
“Straight over to Lucey’s for a drink!” I was prattling and
knew it. “We can talk there. Listen, Charles; you’ve been ill,
haven’t you? I can see it. Why didn’t you let me know?”
He didn’t answer, and I went on babbling rubbish; trying to
talk myself out of the . . . the apprehensiveness which seemed to
be oozing out of him and wrapping itself around the pair of us
like a grey fog. I kept looking at him as we walked past the
barber’s and reached the comer and turned towards Melrose and
its rushing river of traffic. He was looking straight ahead of him.
He was extraordinarily thin: he must have lost twenty pounds—
and he’d never been fat. I kept wishing I could see his eyes
again, and then being glad I couldn’t.
We stood on the curb by the auto-park and waited a chance to
cross Melrose. The sun was low now, and I was shading my
eyes from it when Charles spoke for the first time.
“I can use that drink,” he said, but he still didn’t look at me.
I half-turned, to get the sun out of my eyes—and noticed the
briefcase for the first time. It was tucked firmly under his left
arm and clamped tightly to his side. Even beneath his sleeve I
could see an unusual tensing of the wasted muscles. I was going
to say something, but a break came in the traffic and Charles
plunged out into the road ahead of me.
It was cool in Lucey’s bar, and almost empty. I wondered if
the barman would remember Charles, then recalled that he’d
only been here a couple of months. We ordered—a gin-and-tonic
for me and a whiskey-sour for Charles which he put down in a
couple of gulps.
“Another?” he said. He was looking at the pack of cigarettes
in his hand.
“Mine’s long,” I said. “Miss me this time.”
While I finished my tall glass, he had two more whiskey-
210
Philip MacDonald
sours, the second with an absinthe float. 1 chatted, heavily.
Charles didn't help: with the briefcase tucked under his arm and
clamped against his side, he looked like a starving bird with one
wing.
I bought another round—and began to exchange my uneasi¬
ness for a sort of anger. I said:
“Look here! This is damn ridiculous!" I swivelled around on
my stool and stared at him.
He gave a small barking sound which I suppose was meant to
be a laugh. He said:
“ Ridiculous! . . . Maybe that’s not quite the word, my boy."
He barked again—and I remembered his old laugh, a Gargan¬
tuan affair which would make strangers smile at thirty paces. My
anger went and the other feeling came back.
“Look," I said, dropping my voice. “Tell me what’s wrong,
Charles. There’s something awfully wrong. What is it?"
He stood up suddenly and clicked his fingers at the barman.
“Two more," he said. “And don’t forget the absinthe on mine."
He looked at me fully. His eyes were brighter now, but that
didn’t alter the look in diem. I couldn’t kid myself any more: it
was fear—and, even to me who have seen many varieties of this
unpleasant ailment, a new mixture. Not, in fact, as before, but a
new fear; a fear which transcended all known variations upon the
fear theme.
I supposed I sat there gaping at him. But he didn’t look at me
any more. He clamped the briefcase under his arm and turned
away.
“ ’Phone," he said. “Back in a minute."
He took a step and then halted, turning his head to speak to
me over his shoulder. He said:
“Seen the Archers lately?" and then was gone.
That’s exactly what he said, but at the time, I thought I must
have mis-heard him—because I didn’t know any Archers. Twenty-
five years before, there’d been a John Archer at school with me
but 1 hadn’t known him well and hadn’t liked what 1 did know.
I puzzled over this for a moment; then went back to my
problem. What was the matter with Charles? Where had he been
all this time? Why didn’t anyone hear from or about him? Above
all, what was he afraid of? And why should I be feeling, in the
most extraordinary way, that life was a thin crust upon which we
all moved perilously?
The barman, a placid crust-walker, set a new drink down in
front of me and said something about the weather. I answered
him eagerly, diving into a sunny sanctuary of platitude.
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
211
It did me good—until Charles came back. I watched him cross
the room—and didn’t like it. His clothes hung loose about him,
with room for another Charles inside them. He picked up his
drink and drained it. He drank with his left hand, because the
briefcase was under his right arm now. I said:
“Why don’t you put that thing down? What’s in it, anyway—
nuggets?’’
He shifted it under the other arm and looked at me for a
moment. He said:
“Just some papers. Where’re you dining?’’
“With you.’* I made a quick mental cancellation. “Or you are
with me, rather.’’
“Good!’’ He nodded jerkily. “Let’s get a booth now. One of
the end ones.’’
I stood up. “Okay. But if we’re going to drink any more. I’ll
switch to a martini.’’
He gave the order and we left the bar and in a minute were
facing each other in a far comer booth. Charles looked right at
me now, and I couldn’t get away from his eyes and what was in
them. A waiter came with the drinks and put them in front of us
and went away. I looked down at mine and began to fool with
the tpothpick which speared the olive.
“You’re not a moron,’’ he said suddenly. “Nor a cabbage.
Ever wake up in the morning and know you know the Key—but
when you reach for it, you can’t remember it? It was just there
. . .’’ He made a vague, sharp gesture in the air, close to his
head. “But it’s gone the minute your waking mind reaches for it.
Ever do that? Ever feel that? Not only when you wake maybe;
perhaps at some other sort of time?’’
He was looking down at the table now and I didn’t have to see
his eyes. He was looking down at his hands, claw-like as they
fiddled with brass locks on the briefcase. I said:
“What’re you talking about? What key?’’ I was deliberately
dense.
His eyes blazed at me with some of the old Carolian fire.
“Listen, numbskull!” He spoke without opening his teeth.
“Have you, at any moment in your wretched existence, ever felt
that you knew, only a moment before, the answer to ... to
everything? To the colossal WHY of the Universe? To the
myriad questions entailed by the elaborate creation of Man? To
. . . to Everything , you damned fool!’’
I stopped pretending. “Once or twice,’’ I said. “Maybe more
than that. You mean that awful sensation that you’re on the
verge of knowing the ... the Universal Answer: and know it’s
212
Philip MacDonald
amazingly simple and you wonder why you never thought of it
before—and then you find you don’t know it at all. It’s gone;
snatched away. And you go practically out of your mind trying
to get it back but you never succeed. That’s it, isn’t it? I’ve had
the feeling several times, notably coming out of ether. Everyone
has. Why?”
He was fiddling with the briefcase again. “Why what?” he
said dully. The momentary flash of the old fire had died away.
But I kept at him. I said:
“You can’t start something like that and then throw it away.
Why did you bring the subject up? Did you finally grab the Key
this morning—or did it bite you—or what?”
He still didn’t look up. He went on fiddling with the brass
locks on the case.
“For God’s sake, leave that thing alone!” My irritation was
genuine enough. “It’s getting on my nerves. Sit on it or something,
if it’s so precious. But quit fiddling'.”
He stood up suddenly. He didn’t seem to hear me.
“ ’Phone again,” he said. “Sorry. Forgot something. Won’t
be long.” He started away; then turned and slapped the case
down in front of me. “Have a look through it. Might interest
you.”
And he was gone. I put my hands on the case and was just
going to slip the locks back with my thumbs, when a most
extraordinary sensation . . . permeated me is the only word I can
think of. I was suddenly extremely loath to open the thing. I
pushed it away from me with a quick involuntary gesture, as if it
were hot to the touch.
And immediately I was ashamed of this childish behavior and
took myself in hand and in a moment had it open and the
contents spread in front of me.
They were mostly papers, and all completely innocuous and
unrelated. If you tried for a year you couldn’t get together a less
alarming collection.
There was a program from the Frohman Theatre, New York,
for a play called “Every Other Friday” which I remembered
seeing in ’31. There was a letter from the Secretary to the Dean
of Harvard, with several pages of names attached to it, saying
that in answer to Mr. Moffat’s letter he would find attached the
list he had requested of the Alumni of 1925. There was a letter
from the Manager of a Fifth Avenue apartment house, courte¬
ously replying to Mr. Moffat’s request for a list of the tenants of
his penthouse during the years 1933 to 1935. There were several
old bills from a strange miscellany of stores, a folded page from
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
213
an old school magazine containing the photograph of the football
team of C.M.I. in the year 1919, and a page tom from “Who’s
Who” around one entry of which heavy blue pencil lines had
been drawn.
And that finished the papers. There were only three other
things—an empty, much-worn photograph frame of leather, a
small silver plate (obviously unscrewed from the base of some
trophy) with the names Charles Moffat and T. Perry Devonshire
inscribed upon it, and an old briar pipe with a charred bowl and
broken mouthpiece but a shiny new silver band.
The photograph frame stared up at me from the white tablecloth.
I picked it up—and, as I did so, was struck by a sudden but
undefinable familiarity. I turned it over in my hands, struggling
with the elusive memory-shape, and I saw that, although the
front of it bore every sign of considerable age and usage, it had
never in fact been used. It was one of those frames which you
undo at the back to insert the photograph, and pasted across the
joint between the body of the frame and the movable part was
the original price tag, very old and very dirty, but still bearing
the dim figures $5.86.
I was still looking at it when Charles came back.
“Remember it?” he said.
I twisted the thing about, trying to find a new angle to look at
it from. He said:
“It used to be on my desk. You’ve seen it hundreds of
times.’’
I began to remember. I could see it sitting beside a horseshoe
inkpot—but I couldn’t see what was inside it. I said:
“I can’t think what was in it.’’ And then I remembered. “But
there can’t have been anything.*’ I turned the thing over and
showed him the price tag. I was suddenly conscious of personal
fear.
“Charles!’’ I said. “What the hell is all this?’’
He spoke—but he didn’t answer me. He picked up the collec¬
tion of nonsense and put it back into the briefcase.
“Did you look at ail the stuff?’’ he said.
I nodded, watching him. It seemed that we never looked at
each other squarely, for his eyes were upon his hands.
“Did it suggest anything?’’ he said.
“Not a thing. How could it?’’ I saw that the knuckles of his
interlocked fingers were white. “Look here, Charles, if you
don’t tell me what all this is about I’ll go out of my mind.’’
And then the head waiter came. He smiled at me and bowed
gravely to Charles and asked whether we wished to order.
214
Philip MacDonald
I was going to tell him to wait, but Charles took the menu and
looked at it and ordered something, so 1 did the same.
It was nearly dark outside now and they'd put on the lights.
People were beginning to come in and there was quite a murmur
of talk from the bar. I held my tongue: the moment had passed—I
must wait for another.
They brought cocktails and we sipped them and smoked and
didn't speak until Charles broke the silence. He said then, much
too casually:
“So you haven’t been seeing much of the Archers?].'
“Charles," I said carefully, “I don’t know anyone called
Archer. I never have—except an unpleasant little tick at school."
Our eyes met now, and he didn’t look away. But a waiter
came with hors d’oeuvres. I refused them, but Charles heaped
his plate and began to eat with strange voracity.
“These Archers?" I said at last. “Who are they? Anything to
do with this . . . this . . . trouble you seem to have?"
He looked at me momentarily; then down at his plate again.
He finished what was on it and leaned back and gazed at the wall
over my right shoulder. He said:
“Adrian Archer was a great friend of mine." He took a
cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. “He was also a
friend of yours."
The waiter came again and took away my full plate and
Charles’s empty one.
“What did you say?" I wasn’t trusting my ears.
He took the briefcase from the seat beside him and groped in it
and brought his hand out holding the extract from “Who’s
Who."
“Look at this." He handed me the sheet. “That’s Adrian’s
father."
I took the paper, but went on staring at him. His eyes were
glittering.
“Go on!" he said. “Read it."
The marked entry was short and prosaic. It was the history, in
seven lines, of an Episcopalian minister named William Archibald
Archer.
I read it carefully. I ought to have been feeling, I suppose, that
Charles was a sick man. But I wasn’t feeling anything of the
sort. I can’t describe what I was feeling.
I read the thing again.
“Look here, Charles," I said. “This man had three daughters.
There’s no mention of a son."
“Yes," said Charles. “I know."
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
215
He twiched the paper out of my hand and fished in the
briefcase again and brought out the little silver plate. He said:
“In ’29 I won the doubles in the Lakeside tennis tournament.
Adrian Archer was my partner.” His voice was flat, and the
words without any emphasis. He handed the piece of metal
across to me and once more I read Charles Moffet—T. Perry
Devonshire. . . .
And then the waiter was with us again and for the longest half
hour of my life I watched Charles devour his food while I pushed
mine aside and drank a glass of wine. I watched him eat. I
couldn’t help myself. He ate with a sort of desperate determination;
like a man clutching at the one reality.
Then, at last, the meal was over, with even the coffee gone
and just brandy glasses before us. He began to talk. Not in the
guarded, jerky way he had been using, but with words pouring
out of him. He said:
“I’m going to tell you the story of Adrian Archer—straight.
He was a contemporary of ours—in fact, I was at C.M.I. and
Harvard with him. It was settled he should be a lawyer, but a
year after he left Harvard he suddenly went on the stage. His
father and all his friends —you included—advised him not to.
But Adrian didn’t pay attention. He just smiled, with that odd,
secret smile he’d use sometimes. He just smiled—and his rise to
what they call fame was what they call meteoric. In three years
he was a big name on Broadway. In four he was another in
London. In six they were billing his name before the title of the
play—and in the eighth Hollywood grabbed him and made what
they call a star out of him in a period they call overnight. That
was four years ago—same year that you and I first came out
here. We were both at RKO when he made his terrific hit in
Judgment Day, playing the blind man. ...”
For the first time I interrupted.
“Charles!” I said. “Charles! I saw Judgment Day. Spencer
Tracy played ...”
“Yes,” said Charles. “I know. . . . When Adrian came to
Hollywood, you and I were awfully glad to see him—and when
Margaret came to join him and brought the kid and we’d in¬
stalled them comfortably in a house on the Santa Monica Palisades,
everything was fine.”
He drained the brandy in his glass and tipped some more into
it from the bottle. The single lamp on the table threw sharp¬
angled shadows across his face. He said:
“Well, there they were. Adrian went from success to success
216 Philip MacDonald
in things like The Key Above the Door , Fit for Heroes and
Sunday*s Children .”
He stopped again—and looked directly at me.
“I’m sorry for you,” he said suddenly. “It’s a bad spot to be
in—meeting an old friend and finding he’s gone out of his mind.
And pretending to listen while your mind’s busy with doctors’
names and ’phone numbers.”
I said: “I don’t know what I think—except that I’m not
doubting your sanity. And I can’t understand why I’m not.”
I wished he’d stop looking at me now. But his eyes didn’t
leave my face. He said:
“Seen the Mortimers lately?”
I jumped as if he’d hit me. But I answered in a minute.
“Of course I have,” I said. “I see ’em all the time. Frank and
I have been working together. Matter of fact, I had dinner there
only last night.”
His mouth twisted into the shape of a smile. “Still living on
the Palisades, are they? 107 Paloma Drive?”
“Yes.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “They bought that
place, you know.”
“Yes,” said Charles, “I know. The Archers had the next
house, 109. You found it actually. Adrian liked it all right and
Margaret and the boy were crazy about it, especially the pool.”
He drank some more brandy—and there was a long, sharp-
edged silence. But I wouldn’t say anything, and he began again.
He said:
“D’you remember when you were at MGM two years ago?
You were revamping that Richard The Lion-Heart job and you
had to go to Del Monte on location?”
I nodded. I remembered very well.
“That,” said Charles, “was when it happened. The Morti¬
mers gave a cocktail party. At least, that’s what it started out to
be, but it was after midnight when I left—with the Archers. I’d
parked my car at the comer of Paloma and Palisade, right outside
their house, so I walked along with them and went in for a
nightcap. It was pretty hot, and we sat on the patio, looking over
the swimming pool. There weren’t any servants up and Adrian
went into the house for the drinks. He’d been very quiet all night
and not, I thought, looking particularly fit. I said something
casual about this to Margaret—and then was surprised when she
took me up, very seriously. She said: ‘Charles: he’s worried—
and so am I!” I remember looking at her and fmding that her
eyes were grave and troubled as I’d never seen them. ‘Charles,’
she said, ‘he’s . . .frightened —and so am I!’ ”
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
217
Charles broke off again. He pulled out a handkerchief and I
saw that sweat was glistening on his forehead. He said:
“Before I could say anything Adrian came out with a tray and
put it down and began mixing drinks. He looked at Margaret—
and asked what we’d been talking about and wouldn’t be put off.
She looked apprehensive when I told him, but he didn’t seem to
mind. He gave us both drinks, and took one himself—and sud¬
denly asked me a question I asked you earlier this evening.’’
“About the Key?’’ My voice surprised me: I hadn’t told it to
say anything.
Charles nodded. But he didn’t go on.
“Then what?’’ said my voice. “Then what?’’
“It’s funny,’’ he said. “But this is the first time I’ve told all
this—and I’ve just realized I should’ve begun at the other end
and said / was worried and frightened. Because I was—had been
for weeks. ...”
A frightful feeling of verification swept over me. I said excitedly:
“By God, I remember. About the time I went on location you
were sort of down. You’d had a polo spill. I was a bit worried
about you, but you said you were O.K. ...”
For a moment I thought he was going to break. He looked—
Charles Moffat looked—as if he were going to weep. But he
took hold of himself, and the jaw-muscles in his face stood out
like wire rope. He said:
“The doctor said I was all right. But I wasn’t. Not by a mile!
There was only one thing wrong with me—but that was plenty. 1
wasn’t sleeping. It may have been something to do with the
crack on the head or it may not. But, whatever it was, it was
bad. Very bad. And dope made no difference—except, perhaps,
for the worse. I’d go to sleep all right—but then I’d keep waking
up. And that was the bad part. Because every time I’d wake, that
God-damned Key would be a little nearer. ... At first, it wasn’t
so worrying—merely an irritation. But as it went on, stronger
and stronger, three and four and six times a night—well, it was
bad\"
He stopped abruptly. His tongue seemed to be trying to moisten
his lips. He took a swallow of brandy and then, incredibly, a
long draught of water. The film of sweat was over his forehead
again, and he mopped at it absentmindedly, with the back of
his hand. He said:
“So there you are: and we’re back again—half in moonlight,
half in shadow—on Adrian’s patio, and he’s just asked me
the question and Margaret is leaning forward, her chin cupped
in her hands and I can feel her eyes on my face and I’m
218
Philip MacDonald
staring at Adrian in amazement that he should ask me whether
/ know what it’s like to feel that you’re coming nearer and nearer
to the Answer—that simple, A.B.C. answer which has always
eluded Man; the Answer which is forbidden to Man but which,
when it’s dangled in front of his nose like a donkey’s carrot, he’s
bound to clutch for desperately. . . .
“We were pretty full of drink—you know what the Mortimer
hospitality’s like—and once I’d got over the awful shock of
egotistical surprise at finding that another man, and my greatest
friend to boot, was being ridden by a demon I’d considered my
own personal property, we began to talk thirty to the dozen,
while Margaret turned those great dark eyes upon us in turn.
There was fear in them, but we went on, theorizing to reduce our
fear, and traced the Key-awareness back to our adolescence and
wondered why we’d never told each other about it at school and
gradually—with the decanter getting lower and lower and the
impossible California moon beginning to pale—began to strive to
put into words what we thought might be the shape of the
Key. ...
“We didn’t get very far and we didn’t make much sense: who
can when they’re talking about things for which there are no
words. But we frightened ourselves badly—and Margaret. We
began to talk—or Adrian did, rather because he was much
nearer than I’d ever been—we began to talk about the feeling
that made it all the more essential to grasp the thing; the feeling
that the knowledge wasn’t allowed. And Margaret suddenly
jumped to her feet, and a glass fell from the wicker table and
smashed on the tiles with a thin, shivering ring. I can remember
what she said. I can hear her say it any time I want to and many
times when I don’t. She looked down at us—and she seemed, I
remember, to look very tall although she was a little woman. She
said: ‘Look at it all! LookV and she made a great sweeping
gesture with her arms towards everything in the world outside
this little brick place where we were sitting. And then she said:
“Leave it there— leave it! . . .”
Charles shivered—like a man with ague. And then he took
hold of himself. I could see the jaw-muscles again, and the shine
of the sweat on his forehead. He said at last:
“Margaret sort of crumpled up and fell back into her chair.
She looked small again, and tears were rolling slowly down her
cheeks. I know she didn’t know there were any tears. She sat
with her head up and her arms on the edge of the table and stared
out at the world beyond the swimming pool; the world which
was turning from solid, moon-shot darkness to vague and nebu-
PRIVATE-KEEP OUT
219
lous and unhappy grey. Adrian got up. He sat on the arm of her
chair and put an arm around her shoulders and laid his cheek
against her hair. They were very still and absolutely silent. I
couldn’t stand it and went into the house and found Adrian’s
cellar and a couple of bottles of Perrier Jouet—it was ’28, I
remember—and put some ice in a pail and found some glasses
and took my loot back to the patio. They were still exactly as I’d
left them and I shouted at them to break that immobility: I didn’t
like it. . . .
“It broke all right—and I fooled around with the pail and the
bottles and began talking a streak and at last shoved some wine
down their throats and put away half a pint at a swallow myself
and started in to be very funny. . . .
“Adrian began to help me—and we played the fool and drank
the second bottle and he found a third and at last we got
Margaret laughing and then he stole the curtain with a very nice
swan dive from the patio-wall into the pool, ruining a good
dinner-jacket in the process. . . .
“It was nearly dawn when I left—and they both came around
to the front of the house to see me off. And Margaret asked me
to come to lunch. And I said I would and waved at them and
started the car. And . . . that was all.’’
He didn’t stop abruptly this time. His voice and words just
trailed softly into silence. He sat looking straight at me, abso¬
lutely still. I wanted to get away from his eyes—but I couldn’t.
The silence went on too long. I said:
“Go on! I don’t understand. What d’you mean —‘that was
all’?’’
He said: “I didn’t see the Archers any more. They weren’t
there. They . . . weren’t. I heard Margaret’s voice again—but it
only said one word.’’
And then more silence. I said, finding some words:
“I don’t understand. Tell me.’’
He dropped his eyes while he found a cigarette and lit it. He
said:
“There’s a lot in slang. As Chesterton once pointed out, the
greatest poet of ’em all is Demos. The gag-man or gangster or
rewrite man who first used the phrase ‘rub him out’, said a
whole lot more than he knew. . . . Because that’s what hap¬
pened to Adrian. He was rubbed out —erased—deleted in all
three dimensions of Time—cancelled—made not!’’
“You can’t stop in the middle like that! Tell me what you’re
talking about. What d’you mean?’’
He still looked at me. “I mean what I said. After that morning,
220
Philip MacDonald
there was no more Adrian. ... He was— rubbed out. Remember
the things in the briefcase? Well, they’ll help to explain. After
... it happened, I was—sort of ill. I’ve no idea for how
long—but when I could think again, I set out on a sort of crusade:
to prove to myself that I was the only living thing which
remembered—which knew there’d ever been such an entity as
Adrian Archer. Mind you, I hoped to disprove it, though I felt
all the time I never would. And I haven’t. You saw those papers
and things—they’re just an infinitesimal fraction of my proof.
There was an Adrian Archer—but now there never has been.
That photograph frame used to have his and Margaret’s picture
in it—but now there’s the old price-tag to show it’s never been
opened. That pipe: Adrian gave it to me and my initials were on
it in facsimile of his writing—but now the band’s plain and bare
and new. . . . Adrian Archer was at school and college with me—
but no records show the name and no contemporary mind
remembers. I’ve known his father since I was a pup—but his
father knows he never had a son. There were pictures—photo¬
graphs—in which Adrian and I both were, sometimes together—
and now those same pictures show me with someone whom
every one knows but me. On the programmes of all his plays
there’s another man listed for his part—and that man is a known
and living man in every case; a man who knows he played the
part and remembers doing it as well as other people—you, for
instance—remember his playing it. The pictures he made are all
available to be seen—but there’s no Adrian in them: there’s
some other star—who remembers everything about playing the
part and has the weeks he took in shooting intricately woven into
his life-pattern. Adrian—and everything that was Adrian’s—have
been removed and replaced: he isn't and won't be and never has
been; he was cancelled in esse and posse; taken out of our little
life and time and being like a speck out of yeast. And over the
hole which the speck made the yeast has bubbled and seethed
and closed—and there never was any speck—except to the knowl¬
edge of another speck; a speck who was almost as near to the
danger-point of accidental knowledge as the one which was
removed; a speck whose punishment and warning are memory!”
“Tell me!” I said. “Tell me what happened —after you drove
away. ...”
“My God!” said Charles, and there seemed to be tears in his
eyes. “My God! You’re believing me! . . . I’ll tell you: I drove
home. I was so tired I thought I might really sleep. I tore off my
clothes and rolled into bed after I’d pulled the blinds tight down
against the sun which would be up in a few minutes. And I did
PRIVATEr-KEEP OUT
221
sleep. I’d put a note on the door for my servant not to wake me,
and he didn’t. But the telephone did—and I cursed and rolled
over and groped for it without opening my eyes. . . .
“And then I heard Margaret’s voice, calling my name. I knew
it was her voice—though it was shrill and harsh with wild,
incredible terror. It called my name, over and over again. And
then, when I answered, it said ‘Adrian’s . . .’ And then, without
any other sound—without any click or noise or any sound at
all—she wasn’t there.
“I didn’t waste any time. I slammed the phone down—and in
nothing flat I was in the car and racing up Sunset, past the
Riviera.
“I took the turn into Paloma Drive on two wheels and went
on, around those endless curves, at well over sixty. And I came,
past the Mortimers’ house, to the corner of Paloma and
Palisade. ...”
I interrupted again, in that voice which didn’t feel like mine.
“Wait! I’ve remembered something. You say this house was
on the comer of Palisade Avenue and Paloma Drive, next the
Mortimers’? Well, there isn’t any house there! There’s a little
park-place there—a garden. ...”
“Yes,’’ said Charles, “I know. That’s what you know; what
everyone knows; what the Urban records would prove. . . . But
there, right on that comer, had been a white colonial house,
which you got for the Archers, and out of which I had come only
a few hours before. . . .
“It was glaring, monstrous impossibility—and a brutal, ines¬
capable fact! The green grass and the red flowers blazed at me
with appalling reality, flaunting neat and well-tended and ma¬
tured beauty—and the little white railings and the odd-shaped
green seats and the yellow gravel paths and the spraying fountain
all stared at me with smug actuality. . . .
“I stopped the car somehow. I knew I was on the right road
because I’d seen Mary Mortimer talking to a gardener in front of
their house. I was shaking all over—and Fear had me by the guts
with a cold claw which twisted. I fumbled at the car door. I had
to have air. The sunshine was bright and golden but it was . .
filthy somehow; it was like the light which might be shed by
some huge, undreamt-of reptile. I had to have air, though. I
stumbled out onto the sidewalk and staggered across it towards
one of the seats by the fountain. And my foot caught against
something and there was a sharp pain in my leg and I looked
down. I’d run my shin onto one of those little metal signs they
stick up on lawns, and the plate was bent back so that the white
222
Philip MacDonald
printing on the green background was staring up at me. It said:
‘KEEP OFF THE GRASS’!”
The crust felt thin beneath my feet. I knew he wasn’t going to
say any more—but I kept expecting him to. We sat for a long
time, while a waiter came and cleared away and spread a clean
cloth and finally went.
“Just a minute,” said Charles suddenly. “Have to ’phone
again.”
He walked away—and I went on sitting.
In half an hour, the waiter came back. I asked him where Mr.
Moffat was; surely not still in the ’phone-booth?
He stared. “Mr. Who, sir?”
I said after a long pause but very sharply:
“Mr. Moffat. The gentleman who was dining with me.”
He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.
I wonder how much longer there is for me.
THE HURKLE IS A
HAPPY BEAST
by Theodore Sturgeon (1918— 3
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ,
Fall
Alien beings are one of the staples of modern science
fiction, appearing in countless stories and novels. They come
in all sizes, shapes and colors; they are sometimes very
intelligent, sometimes not; some can handle our atmosphere
and some cannot; sometimes we visit them and on occasion
they visit us—the variations are endless. However, in the
early history of American genre sf, aliens were mean —they
wanted our planet because their own was dying or because it
was overpopulated; they wanted our resources; and they
frequently (beyond all biological possibility) seemed to want
our women (there were very few stories in which they wanted
our men in the same way). Sometimes they wanted all of us
for dinner.
Things did change after a time, thanks to writers like
Stanley G. Weinbaum, and friendly aliens began to appear
and then humans often mistreated them or took advantage of
them and they became surrogates for colonized native peoples,
American Indians, and minority group members. Currently
another type of alien appears frequently—the cuddly, cutesy
aliens of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and especially
E.T. Personally, / like my aliens without many redeeming
qualities, but / have an open mind and / know a great cutesy
alien story when I read one.
So here is ‘ The Hurkle is a Happy Beast ,' ’ one of the best
of its sub-type, and also one (it's only fair to warn you) thafs
not all that it appears to be. — M.H.G.
(A woman, recently, told me that she never read science
fiction because it frightened her so. / realized that she was
223
224
Theodore Sturgeon
thinking of science fiction purely in terms of horror stories
such as those written by Stephen King . Seeing a chance to
educate her qnd, at the same time, do myself a bit of good, I
said, “Buy one of my science fiction books. It won't frighten
you. If it does, let me know, and I'll refund your money."
After a few days, she wrote me, quite enthusiastically, that
my book had not frightened her at all, but had greatly inter¬
ested her, and that she had now discovered a new and particu¬
larly suitable sort of reading material. I was delighted.
As a matter of fact, science fiction can not only be non¬
frightening; it can be downright light and happy. ' The Hurkle
Is a Happy Beast" by Theodore Sturgeon is an example. It is
a very pleasant story involving a very pleasant alien beast
whom any one of us would gladly hug to his (or her) bosom.
And if that makes you happy, then perhaps _ you had better
not read the last eight lines. — I.A.)
Lirht is either in a different universal plane or in another island
galaxy. Perhaps these terms mean the same thing. The fact
remains that Lirht is a planet with three moons (one of which is
unknown) and a sun, which is as important in its universe as is
ours.
Lirht is inhabited by gwik, its dominant race, and by several
less highly developed species which, for purposes of this narrative,
can be ignored. Except, of course, for the hurkle. The hurkle are
highly regarded by the gwik as pets, in spite of the fact that a
hurkle is so affectionate that it can have no loyalty.
The prettiest of the hurkle are blue.
Now, on Lirht, in its greatest city, there was trouble, the
nature of which does not matter to us, and a gwik named Hvov,
whom you may immediately forget, blew up a building which
was important for reasons we cannot understand. This event
caused great excitement, and gwik left their homes and factories
and strubles and streamed toward the center of town, which is
how a certain laboratory door was left open.
In times of such huge confusion, the little things go on.
During the “Ten Days that Shook the World” the cafes and
theaters of Moscow and Petrograd remained open, people fell in
love, sued each other, died, shed sweat and tears; and some of
these were tears of laughter. So on Lirht, while the decisions on
the fate of the miserable Hvov were being formulated, gwik still
fardled, funted, and fupped. The great central hewton still beat
out its mighty pulse, and in the anams the corsons grew . . .
THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST
225
Into the above-mentioned laboratory, which had been left open
through the circumstances described, wandered a hurkle kitten. It
was very happy to find itself there; but then, the hurkle is a
happy beast. It prowled about fearlessly—it could become invisi¬
ble if frightened—and it glowed at the legs of the tables and at
the glittering, racked walls. It moved sinuously, humping its
back and arching along on the floor. Its front and rear legs were
stiff and straight as the legs of a chair; the middle pair had two
sets of knees, one bending forward, one back. It was engineered
as ingeniously as a scorpion, and it was exceedingly blue.
Occupying almost a quarter of the laboratory was a huge and
intricate machine, unhoused, showing the signs of development
projects the galaxies over—temporary hookups from one compo¬
nent to another, cables terminating in spring clips, measuring
devices standing about on small tables near the main work. The
kitten regarded the machine with curiosity and friendly intent,
sending a wave of radiations outward which were its glow or
purr. It arched daintily around to the other side, stepping deli¬
cately but firmly on a floor switch.
Immediately there was a rushing, humming sound, like small
birds chasing large mosquitoes, and parts of the machine began
to get warm. The kitten watched curiously, and saw, high up
inside the clutter of coils and wires, the most entrancing muzzi¬
ness it had ever seen. It was like heat-flicker over a fallow field;
it was like a smoke-vortex; it was like red neon lights on a wet
pavement. To the hurkle kitten’s senses, that red-orange flicker
was also like the smell of catnip to a cat, or anise to a terrestrial
terrier.
It reared up toward the glow, hooked its forelegs over a
busbar—fortunately there was no ground potential—and drew
itself upward. It climbed from transformer to powerpack, skit¬
tered up a variable condenser—the setting of which was changed
thereby—disappeared momentarily as it felt the bite of a hot
tube, and finally teetered on the edge of the glow.
The glow hovered in midair in a sort of cabinet, which was
surrounded by heavy coils embodying tens of thousands of turns
of small wire and great loops of bus. One side, the front, of the
cabinet was open, and the kitten hung there fascinated, rocking
back and forth to the rhythm of some unheard music it made to
contrast this sourceless flame. Back and forth, back and forth it
rocked and wove, riding a wave of delicious, compelling sensation.
And once, just once, it moved its center of gravity too far from
its point of support. Too far—far enough. It tumbled into the
cabinet, into the flame.
226
Theodore Sturgeon
* * *
One muggy, mid-June day a teacher, whose name was Stott
and whose duties were to teach seven subjects to forty moppets
in a very small town, was writing on a blackboard. He was
writing the word Madagascar, and the air was so sticky and
warm that he could feel his undershirt pasting and unpasting
itself on his shoulder blade with each round “a” he wrote.
Behind him there was a sudden rustle from the moist seventh-
graders. His schooled reflexes kept him from turning from the
board until he had finished what he was doing, by which time
the room was in a young uproar. Stott about-faced, opened his
mouth, closed it again. A thing like this would require more than
a routine reprimand.
His forty-odd charges were writhing and squirming in an
extraordinary fashion, and the sound they made, a sort of whim¬
pering giggle, was unique. He looked at one pupil after another.
Here a hand was busily scratching a nape; there a boy was
digging guiltily under his shirt; yonder a scrubbed and shining
damsel violently worried her scalp.
Knowing the value of individual attack, Stott intoned, “Hubert,
what seems to be the trouble?”
The room immediately quieted, though diminished scrabblings
continued. “Nothin’, Mister Stott,” quavered Hubert.
Stott flicked his gaze from side to side. Wherever it rested, the
scratching stopped and was replaced by agonized control. In its
wake was rubbing and twitching. Stott glared, and idly thumbed
a lower left rib. Someone snickered. Before he could identify the
source, Stott was suddenly aware of an intense itching. He
checked the impulse to go after it, knotted his jaw, and swore to
himself that he wouldn’t scratch as long as he was out there,
front and center. “The class will—” he began tautly, and then
stopped.
There was a—a something on the sill of the open window. He
blinked and looked again. It was a translucent, bluish cloud which
was almost nothing at all. It was less than a something should
be, but it was indeed more than a nothing. If he stretched his
imagination just a little, he might make out the oudines of an
arched' creature with too many legs; but of course that was
ridiculous.
He looked away from it and scowled at his class. He had had
two unfortunate experiences with stink bombs, and in the back of
his mind was the thought of having seen once, in a trick-store
window, a product called “itching powder.” Could this be it,
this terrible itch? He knew better, however, than to accuse
THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST
227
anyone yet; if he were wrong, there was no point in giving the
little geniuses any extracurricular notions.
He tried again. “The cl—’’ He swallowed. This itch was . . .
“The class will—” He noticed that one head, then another and
another, were turning toward the window. He realized that if the
class got too interested in what he thought he saw on the window
sill, he’d have a panic on his hands. He fumbled for his ruler and
rapped twice on the desk. His control was not what it should
have been at the moment; he struck far too hard, and the reports
were like gunshots. The class turned to him as one; and behind
them the thing on the window sill appeared with great distinctness.
It was blue—a truly beautiful blue. It had a small spherical
head and an almost identical knob at the other end. There were
four stiff, straight legs, a long sinuous body, and two central
limbs with a boneless look about them. On the side of the head
were four pairs of eyes, of graduated sizes. It teetered there for
perhaps ten seconds, and then, without a sound, leapt through
the window and was gone.
Mr. Stott, pale and shaking, closed his eyes. His knees trem¬
bled and weakened, and a delicate, dewy mustache of perspira¬
tion appeared on his upper lip. He clutched at the desk and
forced his eyes open; and then, flooding him with relief, pealing
into his terror, swinging his control back to him, the bell rang to
end the class and the school day.
“Dismissed,” he mumbled, and sat down. The class picked
up and left, changing itself from a twittering pattern of rows to a
rowdy kaleidoscope around the bottleneck doorway. Mr. Stott
slumped down in his chair, noticing that the dreadful itch was
gone, had been gone since he had made that thunderclap with the
ruler.
Now, Mr. Stott was a man of method. Mr. Stott prided
himself on his ability to teach his charges to use their powers of
observation and all the machinery of logic at their command.
Perhaps, then, he had more of both at his command—after he
recovered himself—than could be expected of an ordinary man.
He sat and stared at the open window, not seeing the sun-
swept lawns outside. And after going over these events a half-
dozen times, he fixed on two important facts:
First, that the animal he had seen, or thought he had seen, had
six legs.
Second, that the animal was of such nature as to make anyone
who had not seen it believe he was out of his mind.
These two thoughts had their corollaries:
228 Theodore Sturgeon
First, that every animal he had ever seen which had six legs
was an insect, and
Second, that if anything were to be done about this fantastic
creature, he had better do it by himself. And whatever action he
took must be taken immediately. He imagined the windows
being kept shut to keep the thing out—in this heat—and he
cowered away from the thought. He imagined the effect of such
a monstrosity if it bounded into the midst of a classroom full of
children in their early teens, and he recoiled. No; there could be
no delay in this matter.
He went to the window and examined the sill. Nothing. There
was nothing to be seen outside, either. He stood thoughtfully for
a moment, pulling on his lower lip and thinking hard. Then he
went downstairs to borrow five pounds of DDT powder from the
janitor for an “experiment.” He got a wide, flat wooden box
and an electric fan, and set them up on a table he pushed close to
the window. Then he sat down to wait, in case, just in case the
blue beast returned.
When the hurkle kitten fell into the flame, it braced itself for a
fall at least as far as the floor of the cabinet. Its shock was
tremendous, then, when it found itself so braced and already
resting on a surface. It looked around, panting with fright, its
invisibility reflex in full operation.
The cabinet was gone. The flame was gone. The laboratory
with its windows, lit by the orange Lirhtian sky, its ranks of
shining equipment, its hulking, complex machine—all were gone.
The hurkle kitten sprawled in an open area, a sort of lawn. No
colors were right; everything seemed half-lit, filmy, out-of-focus.
There were trees, but not low and flat and bushy like honest
Lirhtian trees, but with straight naked trunks and leaves like a
portle’s tooth. The different atomospheric gases had colors; clouds
of fading, changing faint colors obscured and revealed everything.
The kitten twitched its cafmors and ruddled its kump, right there
where it stood; for no amount of early training could overcome a
shock like this.
It gathered itself together and tried to move; and then it got its
second shock. Instead of arching over inchwormwise, it floated
into the air and came down three times as far as it had ever
jumped in its life.
It cowered on the dreamlike grass, darting glances all about,
under, and up. It was lonely and terrified and felt very much put
upon. It saw its shadow through the shifting haze, and the sight
terrified it even more, for it had no shadow when it was fright-
THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST
229
ened on Lirht. Everything here was all backwards and wrong
way up; it got more visible, instead of less, when it was frightened;
its legs didn’t work right, it couldn’t see properly, and there
wasn’t a single, solitary malapek to be throdded anywhere. It
thought it heard some music; happily, that sounded all right
inside its round head, though somehow it didn’t resonate as well
as it had.
It tried, with extreme caution, to move again. This time its
trajectory was shorter and more controlled. It tried a small,
grounded pace, and was quite successful. Then it bobbed for a
moment, seesawing on its flexible middle pair of legs, and, with
utter abandon, flung itself skyward. It went up perhaps fifteen
feet, turning end over end, and landed with its stiff forefeet in
the turf.
It was completely delighted with this sensation. It gathered
itself together, gryting with joy, and leapt up again. This time it
made more distance than altitude, and bounced two long, happy
bounces as it landed.
Its fears were gone in the exploration of this delicious new
freedom of motion. The hurkle, as has been said before, is a
happy beast. It curvetted and sailed, soared and somersaulted,
and at last brought up against a brick wall with stunning and
unpleasant results. It was learning, the hard way, a distinction
between weight and mass. The effect was slight but painful. It
drew back and stared forlornly at the bricks. Just when it was
beginning to feel friendly again . . .
It looked upward, and saw what appeared to be an opening in
the wall some eight feet above the ground. Overcome by a spirit
of high adventure, it sprang upward and came to rest on a
window sill—a feat of which it was very proud. It crouched
there, preening itself, and looked inside.
It saw a most pleasing vista. More than forty amusingly ugly
animals, apparently imprisoned by their lower extremities in
individual stalls, bowed and nodded and mumbled. At the far
end of the room stood a taller, more slender monster with a
naked head—naked compared with those of the trapped ones,
which were covered with hair like a mawson’s egg. A few
moments’ study showed the kitten that in reality only one side of
the heads was hairy; the tall one turned around and began
making tracks in the end wall, and its head proved to be hairy on
the other side too.
The hurkle kitten found this vastly entertaining. It began to
radiate what was, on Lirht, a purr, or glow. In this fantastic
place it was not visible; instead, the trapped animals began to
230
Theodore Sturgeon
respond with most curious writhings and squirmings and susur-
rant rubbings of their hides with their claws. This pleased the
kitten even more, for it loved to be noticed, and it redoubled the
glow. The receptive motions of the animals became almost
frantic.
Then the tall one turned around again. It made a curious sound
or two. Then it picked up a stick from the platform before it and
brought it down with a horrible crash.
The sudden noise frightened the hurkle kitten half out of its
wits. It went invisible; but its visibility system was reversed
here, and it was suddenly outstandingly evident. It turned and
leapt outside, and before it reached the ground, a loud metallic
shrilling pursued it. There were gabblings and shufflings from
the room which added force to the kitten’s consuming terror. It
scrambled to a low growth of shrubbery and concealed itself
among the leaves.
Very soon, however, its irrepressible good nature returned. It
lay relaxed, watching the slight movement of the stems and
leaves—some of them may have been flowers—in a slight breeze.
A winged creature came humming and dancing about one of the
blossoms. The kitten rested on one of its middle legs, shot the
other out and caught the creature in flight. The thing promptly
jabbed the kitten’s foot with a sharp black probe. This the kitten
ignored. It ate the thing, and belched. It lay still for a few
minutes, savoring the sensation of the bee in its clarfel. The
experiment was suddenly not a success. It ate the bee twice more
and then gave it up as a bad job.
It turned its attention again to the window, wondering what
those racks of animals might be up to now. It seemed very quiet
up there . . . Boldly the kitten came from hiding and launched
itself at the window again. It was pleased with itself; it was
getting quite proficient at precision leaps in this mad place.
Preening itself, it balanced on the window sill and looked inside.
Surprisingly, all the smaller animals were gone. The larger
one was huddled behind the shelf at the end of the room. The
kitten and the animal watched each other for a long moment. The
animal leaned down and stuck something into the wall.
Immediately there was a mechanical humming sound and
something on a platform near the window began to revolve. The
next thing the kitten knew it was enveloped in a cloud of pungent
dust.
It choked and became as visible as it was frightened, which
was very. For a long moment it was incapable of motion;
gradually, however, it became conscious of a poignant, painfully
THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST 231
penetrating sensation which thrilled it to the core. It gave itself
up to the feeling. Wave after wave of agonized ecstasy rolled
over it, and it began to dance to the waves. It glowed brilliantly,
though the emanation served only to make the animal in the
room scratch hysterically.
The hurkle felt strange, transported. It turned and leapt high
into the air, out from the building.
Mr. Stott stopped scratching. Disheveled indeed, he went to
the window and watched the odd sight of the blue beast, quite
invisible now, but coated with dust, so that it was like a bubble
in a fog. It bounced across the lawn in huge floating leaps,
leaving behind it diminishing patches of white powder in the
grass. He smacked his hands, one on the other, and smirking,
withdrew to straighten up. He had saved the earth from battle,
murder, and bloodshed, forever, but he did not know that. No
one ever found out what he had done. So he lived a long and
happy life.
And the hurkle kitten?
It bounded off through the long shadows, and vanished in a
copse of bushes. There it dug itself a shallow pit, working
drowsily, more and more slowly. And at last it sank down and
lay motionless, thinking strange thoughts, making strange music,
and racked by strange sensations. Soon even its slightest move¬
ments ceased, and it stretched out stiffly, motionless . . .
For about two weeks. At the end of that time, the hurkle, no
longer a kitten, was possessed of a fine, healthy litter of just
under two hundred young. Perhaps it was the DDT, and perhaps
it was the new variety of radiation that the hurkle received from
the terrestrial sky, but they were all parthenogenetic females,
even as you and I.
And the humans? Oh, we bred so! And how happy we were!
But the humans had the slidy itch, and the scratchy itch, and
the prickly or tingly or titillative paraesthetic formication. And
there wasn’t a thing they could do about it.
So they left.
Isn’t this a lovely place?
KALEIDOSCOPE
by Ray Bradbury (1920— )
Thrilling Wonder Stories, October
Thrilling Wonder Stories, like its sister magazine f Startling
Stories, was one of the Standard Magazines group of
publications. From 1945 to 1951 both magazines were edited
by Sam Merwin (1910- ), who has to be one of the most
criminally neglected editors in the history of science fiction.
Thrilling and Startling existed in the shadow of Astounding,
which in many cases was the preferred market for sf writers.
However, under Merwin and then under Samuel Mines they
achieved a high level of excellence, providing badly needed
alternatives for writers who would not submit to John W.
Campbell, Jr., or for whatever reason would not be published
by him. The Kuttners were regulars (although they also pub¬
lished heavily in ASF), as was Ray Bradbury, for whom they,
along with Planet Stories, were major markets in the late
1940s. Fully one-third of the stories in this book first ap¬
peared in the pages of those two magazines.
The late 1940s were very productive years for Ray Bradbury,
and two other stories, “The Naming of Names” (Thrilling,
August) and “The Man” (Thrilling, February), just missed
inclusion in this volume. — M.H.G.
(Tve never been able to figure out Ray Bradbury’s writing .
If I were to describe the plot of one of his stories, I think it
would seem to you to be impossible to make a story out of it
that would be any good at all, let alone memorable. And you
would be right!
—Unless the story was written by Ray Bradbury.
He can write vignettes in which he creates a powerful
232
KALEIDOSCOPE
233
emotion out of the simplest situation, and “Kaleidoscope” w
an example.
It is unrelievedly grim, yet it reads quickly, matter-of-
factly, and is unforgettable. And, at the end, there is one
quick sub-vignette only four lines long that makes it seem —
But Yll let you figure out the “moral.” Yours may be
different from mine.
I’ve only met Ray Bradbury twice in my life. He lives on
the west coast; I live on the east coast; and neither of us flies.
That makes the process of life-intersection a difficult one for
us. — I.A.)
The first concussion cut the ship up the side like a giant can
opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling
silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a
million pieces, went on like a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.
‘Barkley, Barkley, where are you?’
The sound of voices calling like lost children on a cold night.
‘Woode, Woode!’
‘Captain!’
‘Hollis, Hollis, this is Stone.’
‘Stone, this is Hollis. Where are you?’
‘I don’t know, how can I? Which way is up? I’m falling.
Good gosh, I’m falling.’
They fell. They fell as pebbles fall in the long autumns of
childhood, silver and thin. They were scattered as jack-stones are
scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there
were only voices—all kinds of voices, disembodied and im¬
passioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation.
‘We’re going away from each other.’
This was true. Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this
was true. He knew it with a vague acceptance. They were
parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them
back. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the
glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn’t had time to lock
on their force units. With them, they could be small lifeboats in
space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together,
finding each other until they were an island of men with some
plan. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they
were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrecover¬
able fate.
A period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror
died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave
234
Ray Bradbury
their strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing,
recrossing, making a final pattern.
‘Stone to Hollis. How long can we talk by phone?’
‘It depends on how fast you’re going your way and I’m going
mine.’
‘An hour, I make it.’
‘That should do it,’ said Hollis, abstracted and quiet.
‘What happened?’ said Hollis, a minute later.
‘The rocket blew up, that’s all. Rockets do blow up.’
‘Which way are you going?’
‘It looks like I’ll hit the sun.’
‘It’s Earth for me. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand
miles per hour. I’ll bum like a match.’ Hollis thought of it with a
queer abstraction of mind. He seemed to be removed from his
body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objec¬
tive as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a
winter season long gone.
The others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought
them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to
change it. Even the captain was quiet, for there was no command
or plan he knew that could put things back together again.
‘Oh, it’s a long way down, oh it’s a long way down, a long,
long, long, way down,’ said a voice. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t
want to die, it’s a long way down.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Stimson, I think. Stimson, is that you?’
‘It’s a long long way and I don’t like it, oh God, I don’t like
it.’
‘Stimson, this is Hollis, Stimson, you hear me?’
A pause while they fell separate from one another.
‘Stimson?’
‘Yes.” He replied at last.
‘Stimson, take it easy, we’re all in the same fix.’
‘I don’t want to be here, I want to be somewhere else.’
‘There’s a chance we’ll be found.’
‘I must be, I must be,* said Stimson. ‘I don’t believe this, I
don’t believe any of this is happening.’
‘It’s a bad dream,* said someone.
‘Shut up!’ said Hollis.
‘Come and make me,’ said the voice. It was Applegate. He
laughed easily, with a similar objectivity. ‘Come and shut me
up.’
KALEIDOSCOPE
235
Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. A
great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything in
existence at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate.
He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was
too late. Applegate was only a telephonic voice.
Falling, falling, falling!
Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began
to scream. In a nightmare, Hollis saw one of them float by, very
near, screaming and screaming.
‘Stop it!’ The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming
insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a
million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of
them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.
Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra
effort and touched the man. He grasped the man’s ankle and
pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The
man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer.
The screaming filled the universe.
One way or the other, thought Hollis. The sun or Earth or
meteors will kill him, so why not now?
He smashed the man’s glass mask with his iron fist. The
screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin
away on its own course, falling, falling.
Falling, falling down space went Hollis and the rest of them in
the long, endless dropping and whirling of silent terror.
‘Hollis, you still there?’
Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face.
‘This is Applegate again.’
‘All right, Applegate.’
‘Let’s talk. We haven’t anything else to do.’
The captain cut in. ‘That’s enough of that. We’ve got to figure
a way out of this.’
‘Captain, why don’t you shut up?’ said Applegate.
‘What!’
‘You heard me, Captain. Don’t pull your rank on me, you’re
ten thousand miles away by now, and let’s not kid ourselves. As
Stimson puts it, it’s a long way down.’
‘See here, Applegate!’
‘Can it. This a mutiny of one. I haven’t a damn thing to lose.
Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope
you roast when you hit the sun.’
‘I’m ordering you to stop!’
‘Go on, order me again.’ Applegate smiled across ten thou-
236
Ray Bradbury
sand miles. The captain was silent. Applegate continued, ‘Where
were we, Hollis? Oh, yes, I remember. I hate you, too. But you
know that. You’ve known it for a long time.’
Hollis clenched his fists, helplessly.
‘I want to tell something,’ said Applegate. ‘Make you happy.
I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company
five years ago.’
A meteor flashed by. Hollis looked down and his left hand
was gone. Blood spurted. Suddenly there was no air in his suit.
He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and
twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the
leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised.
Nothing surprised him any more. The air in the suit came back to
normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed. And the blood
that had flowed so swiftly was pressured as he fastened the knob
yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.
All of this took place in a terrible silence on his part. And the
other men chatted. That one man, Lespere, went on and on with
his talk about his wife on Mars, his wife on Venus, his wife on
Jupiter, his money, his wondrous times, his drunkenness, his
gambling, his happiness. On and on, while they all fell, fell.
Lespere reminisced on the past, happy, while he fell to his death.
It was so very odd. Space, thousands of miles of space, and
these voices vibrating in the center of it. No one visible at all,
and only the radio waves quivering and trying to quicken other
men into emotion.
‘Are you angry, Hollis?’
‘No.’ And he was not. The abstraction had returned and he
was a thing of dull concrete, forever falling nowhere.
‘You wanted to get to the top all your life, Hollis. And I
ruined it for you. You always wondered what happened. I put
the black marie on you just before I was tossed out myself. ’
‘That isn’t important,’ said Hollis. And it was not. It was
gone. When life is over it is like a flicker of bright film, an
instant on the screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed
and illumined for an instant on space, and before you could cry
out. There was a happy day, there a bad one, there an evil face,
there a good one, the film burned to a cinder, the screen went
dark.
From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only
one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.
Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived?
Does life seem that short, indeed, over and down before you
KALEIDOSCOPE
237
took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone,
or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for
thought and deliberation?
One of the other men was talking. ‘Well, I had me a good life.
I had a wife on Mars and one on Venus and one on Earth and
one on Jupiter. Each of them had money and they treated me
swell. I had a wonderful time. I got drunk and once I gambled
away twenty thousand dollars.’
But you’re here now, thought Hollis. I didn’t have any of
those things. When I was living I was jealous of you, Lespere,
when I had another day ahead of me I envied you your women
and your good times. Women frightened me and I went into
space, always wanting them, and jealous of you for having them,
and money, and as much happiness as you could have in your
own wild way. But now, falling here, with everything over, I’m
not jealous of you any more, because it’s over for you as it is
over for me, and right now it’s like it never was. Hollis craned
his face forward and shouted into the telephone.
‘It’s all over, Lespere!’
Silence.
‘It’s just as if it never was, Lespere!’
‘Who’s that?’ Lespere’s faltering voice.
‘This is Hollis.’
He was being mean. He felt the meanness, the senseless
meanness of dying. Applegate had hurt him, now he wanted to
hurt another. Applegate and space had both wounded him.
‘You’re out here, Lespere. It’s all over. It’s just as if it had
never happened, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘When anything’s over, it’s just like it never happened. Where’s
your life any better than mine, now? While it was happening,
yes, but now? Now is what counts. Is it any better, is it?’
‘Yes, it’s better!’
‘How!*
‘Because I got my thoughts; I remember!' cried Lespere, far
away, indignant, holding his memories to his chest with both
hands.
And he was right. With a feeling of cold water gushing through
his head and his body, Hollis knew he was right. There were dif¬
ferences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of
things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of
things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull
Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.
238
Ray Bradbury
‘What good does it do you?’ he cried to Lespere. ‘Now?
When a thing’s over it’s not good any more. You’re no better off
than me.’
‘I’m resting easy,’ said Lespere. ‘I’ve had my turn. I’m not
getting mean at the end, like you.’
‘Mean?’ Hollis turned the word on his tongue. He had never
been mean, as long as he could remember, in his life. He had
never dared to be mean. He must have saved it all of these years
for such a time as this. ‘Mean.’ He rolled the word into the back
of his mind. He felt tears start into his eyes and roll down his
face. Someone must have heard his gasping voice.
‘Take it easy, Hollis.’
It was, of course, ridiculous. Only a minute before he had
been giving advice to others, to Stimson, he had felt a braveness
which he had thought to be the genuine thing, and now he knew
that it had been nothing but shock and the objectivity possible in
shock. Now he was trying to pack a lifetime of suppressed
emotion into an interval of minutes.
‘I know how you feel, Hollis,’ said Lespere, now twenty
thousand miles away, his voice fading. ‘I don’t take it personally.’
But aren’t we equal, his wild mind wondered. Lespere and I?
Here, now? If a thing’s over it’s done, and what good is it? You
die anyway. But he knew he was rationalizing, for it was like
trying to tell the difference between a live man and a corpse.
There was a spark in one, and not in the other, an aura, a
mysterious element.
So it was with Lespere and himself; Lespere had lived a good
full life, and it made him a different man now, and he, Hollis,
had been as good as dead for many years. They came to death by
separate paths and, in all likelihood, if there were kinds of
deaths, their kinds would be as different as night from day. The
quality of death, like that of life, must be of infinite variety, and
if one has already died once, then what .is there to look for in
dying for once and all, as he was now?
It was a second later that he discovered his right foot was cut
sheer away. It almost made him laugh. The air was gone from
his suit again, he bent quickly, and there was blood, and the
meteor had taken flesh and suit away to the ankle. Oh, death in
space was most humorous, it cut you away, piece by piece, like
a black and invisible butcher. He tightened the valve at the knee,
his head whirling into pain, fighting to remain aware, and with
the valve tightened, the blood retained, the air kept, he straight¬
ened up and went on falling, falling, for that was all there was
left to do.
KALEIDOSCOPE
239
‘Hollis?’
Hollis nodded sleepily, tired of waiting for death.
‘This is Applegate again,’ said the voice.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve had time to think. I listened to you. This isn’t good. It
makes us mean. This is a bad way to die. It brings all the bile
out. You listening, Hollis?*
‘Yes.’
‘I lied. A minute ago. I lied. I didn’t blackball you. I don’t
know why I said that. Guess I wanted to hurt you. You seemed
the one to hurt. We’ve always fought. Guess I’m getting old fast
and repenting fast, I guess listening to you be mean made me
ashamed. Whatever the reason, I want you to know I was an
idiot, too. There’s not an ounce of truth in what I said. To heck
with you.*
Hollis felt his heart begin to work again. It seemed as if it hadn’t
worked for five minutes, but now all of his limbs began to take
color and warmth. The shock was over, and the successive
shocks of anger and terror and loneliness were passing. He felt
like a man emerging from a cold shower in the morning, ready
for breakfast and a new day.
‘Thanks, Applegate.’
‘Don’t mention it. Up your nose, you slob.’
‘Where’s Stimson, how is he?’
‘Stimson?*
They listened.
No answer.
‘He must be gone.’
‘I don’t think so. Stimson!’
They listened again.
They could hear a long, slow, hard breathing in their phones.
‘That’s him. Listen.’
‘Stimson!’
No reply.
Only the slow, hard breathing.
‘He won’t answer.’
‘He’s gone insane, God help him.’
‘That’s it. Listen.’
The silent breathing, the quiet.
‘He’s closed up like a clam. He’s in himself, making a pearl.
Listen to the poet, will you. He’s happier than us now, anyway.’
They listened to Stimson float away.
‘Hey,’ said Stone.
240 Ray Bradbury
‘What?* Hollis called across space, for Stone, of all of them,
was a good friend.
Tve got myself into a meteor swarm, some little asteroids.’
‘Meteors?*
‘I think it’s the Myrmidone cluster that goes out past Mars and
in toward Earth once every five years. I’m right in the middle.
It’s like a big kaleidoscope. You get all kinds of colors and
shapes and sizes. God, it’s beautiful, all the metal.’
Silence.
‘I’m going with them,’ said Stone. ‘They’re taking me off
with them. I’ll be damned.’ He laughed tightly.
Hollis looked to see, but saw nothing. There were only the
great jewelries of space, the diamonds and sapphires and emerald
mists and velvet inks of space, with God’s voice mingling
among the crystal fires. There was a kind of wonder and imagina¬
tion in the thought of Stone going off in the meteor swarm, out
past Mars for years and coming in toward Earth every five years,
passing in and out of the planet’s ken for the next million years.
Stone and the Myrmidone cluster eternal and unending, shifting
and shaping like the kaleidoscope colours when you were a child
and held the long tube to the sun and gave it a twirl.
‘So long, Hollis.’ Stone’s voice, very faint now. ‘So long.’
‘Good luck,’ shouted Hollis across thirty thousand miles.
‘Don’t be funny,’ said Stone, and was gone.
The stars closed in.
Now all the voices were fading, each on their own trajectories,
some to the sun, others into farthest space. And Hollis himself.
He looked down. He, of all the others, was going back to Earth
alone.
‘So long.*
‘Take it easy.’
‘So long, Hollis.’ That was Applegate.
The many goodbyes. The short farewells. And now the great
loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain
which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case
of the rocket ship racing through space, were dying one by one,
the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a
body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the
ship and their long time together and what they meant to one
another was dying. Applegate was now no more than a finger
blown from the parent body, no longer to be despised and
worked against. The brain was exploded, and the senseless,
useless fragments of it were far-scattered. The voices faded and
now all of space was silent. Hollis was alone, falling.
KALEIDOSCOPE
241
They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the
words of God spoken and vibrating in the starred space. There
went the captain to the sun; there Stone with the meteor swarm;
there Stimson, tightened and unto himself; there Applegate
toward Pluto; there Smith and Turner and Underwood and all the
rest, the shards of the kaleidoscope that had formed a thinking
pattern for so long, now hurled apart.
And I? thought Hollis. What can I do? Is there anything I can
do now to make up for a terrible and empty life? If I could do
one good thing to make up for the meanness I collected all these
years and didn’t even know was in me? But there’s no one here,
but myself, and how can you do good all alone? You can’t.
Tomorrow night I’ll hit Earth’s atmosphere.
I’ll bum, he thought, and be scattered in ashes all over the
continental lands. I’ll be put to use. Just a little bit, but ashes are
ashes and they’ll add to the land.
He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron
weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or
happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing
now that everyone was gone, a good thing for just himself to
know about.
When I hit the atmosphere, I’ll bum like a meteor.
‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘If anyone’ll see me?’
The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed.
‘Look, Mom, look! A falling star!’
The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois.
‘Make a wish,’ said his mother. ‘Make a wish.’
DEFENSE MECHANISM
by Katherine MacLean (1925— )
Astounding Science Fiction, October
The number of notable first stories in the history of science
fiction is truly impressive. In fact, at least two anthologies of
these stories have been published, First Flight (1963), and
First Voyages (greatly expanded version of the previous book,
1981), and one could easily fill up several additional volumes.
"Defense Mechanism" was Katharine MacLean*s first pub¬
lished story, and began a career that, while filled with excel¬
lent stories and some recognition, never attained the heights
she was capable of. Like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison,
she is primarily a short story writer, but unlike them she is
not very prolific. She won a Nebula Award for “The Missing
Man" (1971), a part of her novel Missing Man (1975). The
best of her early stories can be found in The Diploids (1962),
while Cosmic Checkmate (1962, written with Charles de Vet)
is an interesting first, and so far, only novel (Missing Man
consists of previously published linked stories ).— M.H.G.
(Telepathy is something we all apparently have a hankering
for . At least, any report of the existence of telepathy is
eagerly accepted, and any story dealing with telepathy has a
great big point in its favor from the start.
Why this interest? I suppose an obvious answer is that it
would be so convenient to be able to communicate as easily
as we think.
Isn't talking almost as convenient and easy as thinking?
Well, maybe, but the possibility of lying turns speech sour. As
the saying goes, "Speech was invented so that we might
conceal our thoughts."
In that case, might it not be very convenient to be tele-
242
DEFENSE MECHANISM
243
pathic and to see beyond the lies? Convenient for whom? Not
for the liar, certainly . —And that means all of us.
If you're not a liar, tell the truth! Do you want all your
thoughts out in the open? Isn't it convenient, even necessary,
to let your words mismatch the facts now and then?
Actually, there are all sorts of quirks to telepathy and, in
“Defense Mechanism," Katherine Maclean thinks up a nice
one . And if her speculation were correct, to how many of us
might something like this have happened?—I.A.)
The article was coming along smoothly, words flowing from the
typewriter in pleasant simple sequence, swinging to their prede¬
termined conclusion like a good tune. Ted typed contentedly,
adding pages to the stack at his elbow.
A thought, a subtle modification of the logic of the article
began to glow in his mind; but he brushed it aside impatiently.
This was to be a short article, and there was no room for
subtlety. His articles sold, not for depth, but for an oddly
individual quirk that he could give to commonplaces.
While he typed a little faster, faintly in the echoes of his
thought the theme began to elaborate itself richly with correlations,
modifying qualifications, and humorous parenthetical remarks.
An eddy of especially interesting conclusions tried to insert itself
into the main stream of his thoughts. Furiously he typed along
the dissolving thread of his argument.
“Shut up,” he snarled. “Can’t I have any privacy around
here?”
The answer was not a remark, it was merely a concept; two
electro-chemical calculators pictured with the larger in use as a
control mech, taking a dangerously high inflow, and controlling
it with high resistance and blocs, while the smaller one lay
empty and unblocked, its unresistant circuits ramifying any im¬
pulses received along the easy channels of pure calculation. Ted
recognized the diagram from his amateur concepts of radio and
psychology.
“All right. So I’m doing it myself. So you can’t help it!” He
grinned grudgingly. “Answering back at your age!”
Under the impact of a directed thought the small circuits of the
idea came in strongly, scorching their reception and rapport
diagram into his mind in flashing repetitions, bright as small
lightning strokes. Then it spread and the small other brain flashed
into brightness, reporting and repeating from every center. Ted
244
Katherine MacLean
even received a brief kinesthetic sensation of lying down, before
it was all cut off in a hard bark of thought that came back in
exact echo of his own irritation.
“Tune down!” It ordered furiously. “You’re blasting in too
loud and jamming everything up! What do you want, an idiot
child?”
Ted blanketed down desperately, cutting off all thoughts, relax¬
ing every muscle; but the angry thoughts continued coming in
strongly a moment before fading.
“Even when I take a nap,” they said, “he starts thinking at
me! Can’t I get any peace and privacy around here?”
Ted grinned. The kid’s last remark sounded like something a
little better than an attitude echo. It would be hard to tell when
the kid’s mind grew past a mere selective echoing of outside
thoughts and became true personality, but that last remark was a
convincing counterfeit of a sincere kick in the shin. Conditioned
reactions can be efficient.
All the luminescent streaks of thought faded and merged with
the calm meaningless ebb and flow of waves in the small sleep¬
ing mind. Ted moved quietly into the next room and looked
down into the blue-and-white crib. The kid lay sleeping, his
thumb in his mouth and his chubby face innocent of thought.
Junior—Jake.
It was an odd stroke of luck that Jake was bom with this
particular talent. Because of it they would have to spend the
winter in Connecticut, away from the mental blare of crowded
places. Because of it Ted was doing free lance in the kitchen,
instead of minor editing behind a New York desk. The winter
countryside was wide and windswept, as it had been in Ted’s
own childhood, and the warm contacts with the stolid personali¬
ties of animals through Jake’s mind were already a pleasure. Old
acquaintances—Ted stopped himself skeptically. He was no
telepath. He decided that it reminded him of Ernest Thompson
Seton’s animal bjographies, and went back to typing, dismissing
the question.
It was pleasant to eavesdrop on things through Jake, as long as
the subject was not close enough to the article to interfere with
it.
Five small boys let out of kindergarten came trooping by on
the road, chattering and throwing pebbles. Their thoughts came
in jumbled together in distracting cross currents, but Ted stopped
typing for a moment, smiling, waiting for Jake to show his latest
trick. Babies are hypersensitive to conditioning. The burnt
DEFENSE MECHANISM
245
hand learns to yank back from fire, the unresisting mind learns
automatically to evade too many clashing echoes of other
minds.
Abruptly the discordant jumble of small boy thoughts and
sensations delicately untangled into five compartmented strands
of thoughts, then one strand of little boy thoughts shoved the
others out, monopolizing and flowing easily through the blank
baby mind, as a dream flows by without awareness, leaving no
imprint of memory, fading as the children passed over the hill.
Ted resumed typing, smiling. Jake had done the trick a shade
faster than he had yesterday. He was learning reflexes easily
enough to demonstrate normal intelligences. At least he was to
be more than a gifted moron.
A half hour later, Jake had grown tired of sleeping and was
standing up in his crib, shouting and shaking the bars. Martha
hurried in with a double armload of groceries.
“Does he want something?”
“Nope. Just exercising his lungs.” Ted stubbed out his ciga¬
rette and tapped the finished stack of manuscript contentedly.
“Got something here for you to proofread.”
“Dinner first,” she said cheerfully, unpacking food from the
bags. “Better move the typewriter and give us some elbow
room.”
Sunlight came in the windows and shone on the yellow table
top, and glinted on her dark hair as she opened packages.
“What’s the local gossip?” he asked, clearing off the table.
“Anything new?”
“Meat’s going up again,” she said, unwrapping peas and
fillets of mackerel. “Mrs. Watkins’ boy, Tom, is back from the
clinic. He can see fine now, she says.”
He put water on to boil and began greasing a skillet while she
rolled the fillets in cracker crumbs. “If I’d had to run a flame
thrower during the war, I*d have worked up a nice case of
hysteric blindness myself,” he said. “I call that a legitimate
defense mechanism. Sometimes it’s better to be blind.”
“But not all the time,” Martha protested, putting baby food in
the double boiler. In five minutes lunch was cooking.
“Whaaaa—” wailed Jake.
Martha went into the baby’s room, and brought him out,
cuddling him and crooning. “What do you want, Lovekins?
Baby just wants to be cuddled, doesn’t baby.”
“Yes,” said Ted.
246
Katherine MacLean
She looked up, startled, and her expression changed, became
withdrawn and troubled, her dark eyes clouded in difficult thought.
Concerned, he asked: “What is it. Honey?”
“Ted, you shouldn’t—” She struggled with words. “I know,
it is handy to know what he wants, whenever he cries. It’s handy
having you tell me, but I don’t— It isn’t right somehow. It isn’t
right."
Jake waved an arm and squeaked randomly. He looked unhappy.
Ted took him and laughed, making an effort to sound confident
and persuasive. It would be impossible to raise the kid in a
healthy way if Martha began to feel he was a freak. “Why isn’t
it right? It’s normal enough. Look at E. S. P. Everybody has that
according to Rhine.”
“E. S. P. is different,” she protested feebly, but Jake chortled
and Ted knew he had her. He grinned, bouncing Jake up and
down in his arms.
“Sure it’s different,” he said cheerfully. “E. S. P. is queer.
E. S. P. comes in those weird accidental little flashes that
contradict time and space. With clairvoyance you can see through
walls, and read pages from a closed book in France. E. S. P.,
when it comes, is so ghastly precise it seems like tips from old
Omniscience himself. It’s enough to drive a logical man insane,
trying to explain it. It’s illogical, incredible, and random. But
what Jake has is limited telepathy. It is starting out fuzzy and
muddled and developing towards accuracy by plenty of trial and
error—like sight, or any other normal sense. You don’t mind
communicating by English, so why mind communicating by
telepathy?”
She smiled wanly. “But he doesn’t weigh much, Ted. He’s
not growing as fast as it says he should in the baby book.”
“That’s all right. I didn’t really start growing myself until I
was about two. My parents thought I was sickly.”
“And look at you now.” She smiled genuinely. “All right,
you win. But when does he start talking English? I’d like to
understand him, too. After all. I’m his mother.”
“Maybe this year, maybe next year,” Ted said teasingly. “I
didn’t start talking until I was three.”
“You mean that you don’t want him to learn,” she told him
indignantly, and then smiled coaxingly at Jake. “You’ll learn
English soon for Mommy, won’t you, Lovekins?”
Ted laughed annoyingly. “Try coaxing him next month or the
month after. Right now he’s not listening to all these thoughts.
He’s just collecting associations and reflexes. His cortex might
DEFENSE MECHANISM
247
organize impressions on a logic pattern he picked up from me,
but it doesn’t know what it is doing any more than this fist
knows that it is in his mouth. That right, bud?” There was no
demanding thought behind the question, but instead, very
delicately, Ted introspected to the small world of impression and
sensation that flickered in what seemed a dreaming comer of his
own mind. Right then it was a fragmentary world of green and
brown that murmured with the wind.
“He’s out eating grass with the rabbit,” Ted told her.
Not answering, Martha started putting out plates. “I like
animal stories for children,” she said determinedly. “Rabbits
are nicer than people.”
Putting Jake in his pen, Ted began to help. He kissed the back
of her neck in passing. “Some people are nicer than rabbits.”
Wind rustled tall grass and tangled vines where the rabbit
snuffled and nibbled among the sun-dried herbs, moving on
habit, ignoring the abstract meaningless contact of minds, with
no thought but deep comfort.
Then for a while Jake’s stomach became aware that lunch was
coming, and the vivid business of crying and being fed drowned
the gentler distant neural flow of the rabbit.
Ted ate with enjoyment, toying with an idea fantastic enough
to keep him grinning, as Martha anxiously spooned food into
Jake’s mouth. She caught him grinning and indignantly began
justifying herself. “But he only gained four pounds, Ted. I have
to make sure he eats something.”
“Only!” he grinned. “At that rate he’d be thirty feet high by
the time he reaches college.”
“So would any baby.” But she smiled at the idea, and gave
Jake his next spoonful still smiling. Ted did not tell his real
thought, that if Jake’s abilities kept growing in a straight-line
growth curve, by the time he was old enough to vote he would
be God; but he laughed again, and was rewarded by an answer¬
ing smile from both of them.
The idea was impossible, of course. Ted knew enough biology
to know that there could be no sudden smooth jumps in evolution.
Smooth changes had to be worked out gradually through genera¬
tions of trial and selection. Sudden changes were not smooth,
they crippled and destroyed. Mutants were usually monstrosities.
Jake was no sickly freak, so it was certain that he would not
turn out very different from his parents. He could be only a little
better. But the contrary idea had tickled Ted and he laughed
248
Katherine MacLean
again. “Boom food,” he told Martha. “Remember those straight-
line growth curves in the story?”
Martha remembered, smiling, “Redfem’s dream—sweet little
man, dreaming about a growth curve that went straight up.” She
chuckled, and fed Jake more spoonfuls of strained spinach,
saying, “Open wide. Eat your boom food, darling. Don’t you
want to grow up like King Kong?”
Ted watched vaguely, toying now with a feeling that these
months of his life had happened before, somewhere. He had felt
it before, but now it came back with a sense of expectancy, as if
something were going to happen.
It was while drying the dishes that Ted began to feel sick.
Somewhere in the far distance at the back of his mind a
tiny phantom of terror cried and danced and gibbered. He
glimpsed it close in a flash that entered and was cut off
abrupdy in a vanishing fragment of delirium. It had some¬
thing to do with a tangle of brambles in a field, and it
was urgent.
Jake grimaced, his face wrinkled as if ready either to smile or
cry. Carefully Ted hung up the dish towel and went out the back
door, picking up a billet of wood as he passed the woodpile. He
could hear Jake whimpering, beginning to wail.
“Where to?” Martha asked, coming out the back door.
“Dunno,” Ted answered. “Gotta go rescue Jake’s rabbit. It’s
in trouble.”
Feeling numb, he went across the fields through an outgrowth
of small trees, climbed a fence into a field of deep grass and
thorny tangles of raspberry vines, and started across.
A few hundred feet into the field there was a hunter sitting on
an outcrop of rock, smoking, with a successful bag of two
rabbits dangling near him. He turned an inquiring face to Ted.
“Sorry,” the hunter said. He was quiet-looking man with a
sagging, middle-aged face. “It can’t understand being upside
down with its legs tied.” Moving with shaky urgency he took
his penknife and cut the small animal’s pulsing throat, then
threw the wet knife out of his hand into the grass. The rabbit
kicked once more, staring still at the tangled vines of refuge.
Then its nearsighted baby eyes lost their glazed bright stare
and became meaningless.
“That’s all right,” Ted replied, “but be a little more careful
next time, will you? You’re out of season anyhow.” He looked
up from the grass to smile stiffly at the hunter. It was difficult.
DEFENSE MECHANISM
249
There was a crowded feeling in his head, like a coining head¬
ache, or a stuffy cold. It was difficult to breathe, difficult to
think.
It occurred to Ted then to wonder why Jake had never put him
in touch with the mind of an adult. After a frozen stoppage of
thought he laboriously started the wheels again and realized that
something had put him in touch with the mind of the hunter, and
that was what was wrong. His stomach began to rise. In another
minute he would retch.
Ted stepped forward and swung the billet of wood in a clumsy
sidewise sweep. The hunter’s rifle went off and missed as the
middle-aged man tumbled face first into the grass.
Wind rustled the long grass and stirred the leafless branches
of trees. Ted could hear and think again, standing still and
breathing in deep, shuddering breaths of air to clean his lungs.
Briefly he planned what to do. He would call the sheriff and say
that a hunter hunting out of season had shot at him and he had
been forced to knock the man out. The sheriff would take the
man away, out of thought range.
Before he started back to telephone he looked again at the
peaceful, simple scene of field and trees and sky. It was safe to
let himself think now. He took a deep breath and let himself
think. The memory of horror came into clarity.
The hunter had been psychotic.
Thinking back, Ted recognized parts of it, like faces glimpsed
in writhing smoke. The evil symbols of psychiatry, the bloody
poetry of the Golden Bough, that had been the law of mankind in
the five hundred thousand lost years before history. Torture and
sacrifice, lust and death, a mechanism in perfect balance, a short
circuit of conditioning through a glowing channel of symbols, an
irreversible and perfect integration of traumas. It is easy to go
mad, but it is not easy to go sane.
“Shut up!** Ted had been screaming inside his mind as he
struck. “Shut up.”
It had stopped. It had shut up. The symbols were fading
without having found root in his mind. The sheriff would take
the man away out of thought reach, and there would be no
danger. It had stopped.
The burned hand avoids the fire. Something else had stopped.
Ted’s mind was queeriy silent, queerly calm and empty, as he
walked home across the winter fields, wondering how it had
happened at all, kicking himself with humor for a suggestible
fool, not yet missing—Jake.
250
Katherine MacLean
And Jake lay awake in his pen, waving his rattle in random
motions, and crowing “glaglagla gla—” in a motor sensory
cycle, closed and locked against outside thoughts.
He would be a normal baby, as Ted had been, and as Ted’s
father before him.
And as all mankind was “normal.”
COLD WAR _
by Henry Kuttner (1914-1958)
Thrilling Wonder Stories , October
The third selection by the terrific Kuttners (and to some
extent all they published under whatever name after their
marriage owed something to both) is this charming tale about
“just plain folks” who happen to be mutants. “Cold War” is
the last of a series of four stories about the Hogbens, all of
which appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories —“Exit the
Professor” (October, 1947), “Pile of Trouble” (April, 1948),
and “See You Later” (June, 1949). It’s a shame that they
didn't write a few more, because they would have made a fine
collection. — M.H.G.
(When I first started to write, I attempted, in a few stories,
to present a dialect by means of specialized spelling. No
doubt I wasn't skillful enough to carry it off, so that 1 found
the stories embarrassing to reread when / was done, and even
more embarrassing to reread if they happened to get pub -
lished (as a few did.) Quite early in the game 1 therefore
stopped and had every character I dealt with speak cultured
English or, at least, correctly spelled English.
There are advantages to dialect, however. If you tell a
story in the first person and in dialect, you make it plain to
the reader that you are dealing with a culture quite distinct from
that of the American establishment. It gives odd events and odd
outlooks a greater verisimilitude, and it also serves as a source
of humor. Of two narratives, all things being otherwise equal,
the one in dialect is funnier.
If, that is, it is done right. Henry Kuttner does it right in
Cold War as I'm sure you will very quickly decide for yourself.
1 couldn't do it.—JA.)
251
252
Henry Kuttner
Chapter /. Last of the Pughs
I’ll never have a cold in the haid again without I think of little
Junior Pugh. Now there was a repulsive brat if ever I saw one.
Built like a little gorilla, he was. Fat, pasty face, mean look, eyes
so close together you could poke ’em both out at once with one
finger. His paw thought the world of him though. Maybe that
was natural, seeing as how little Junior was the image of his
pappy.
“The last of the Pughs,” the old man used to say stickin’ his
chest out and beamin’ down at the little gorilla. “Finest little lad
that ever stepped.”
It made my blood run cold sometimes to look at the two of
’em together. Kinda sad, now, to think back to those happy days
when I didn’t know either of ’em. You may not believe it but
them two Pughs, father and son, between ’em came within that
much of conquerin’ the world.
Us Hogbens is quiet folks. We like to keep our heads down
and lead quiet lives in our own little valley, where nobody comes
near withouten we say so. Our neighbors and the folks in the
village are used to us by now. They know we try hard not to act
conspicuous. They make allowances.
If Paw gets drunk, like last week, and flies down the middle of
Main Street in his red underwear most people make out they
don’t notice, so’s not to embarrass Maw. They know he’d walk
like a decent Christian if he was sober.
The thing that druv Paw to drink that time was Little Sam,
which is our baby we keep in a tank down-cellar, startin’ to
teethe again. First time since the War Between the States. We’d
figgered he was through teething, but with Little Sam you never
can tell. He was mighty restless, too.
A perfesser we keep in a bottle told us once Little Sam
e-mitted subsonic somethings when he yells but that’s just his
way of talking. Don’t mean a thing. It makes your nerves
twiddle, that’s all. Paw can’t stand it. This time it even woke up
Grandpaw in the attic and he hadn’t stirred since Christmas. First
thing after he got his eyes open he bust out madder’ n a wet hen
at Paw.
“I see ye, wittold knave that ye are!” he howled. “Flying
again, is it? Oh, sic a reowfule sigte! I’ll ground ye, ywis!”
There was a far-away thump.
COLD WAR
253
“You made me fall a good ten feet!” Paw hollered from away
down the valley. “It ain’t fair. I could of busted something!”
“Ye’ll bust us all, with your dronken carelessness,” Grandpaw
said. “Flying in full sight of the neighbors! People get burned at
the stake for less. You want mankind to find out all about us?
Now shut up and let me tend to Baby.”
Grandpaw can always quiet the baby if nobody else can. This
time he sung him a little song in Sanskrit and after a bit they was
snoring a duet.
I was fixing up a dingus for Maw to sour up some cream for
sour-cream biscuits. I didn’t have much to work with but an old
sled and some pieces of wire but I didn’t need much. I was
trying to point the top end of the wire north-northeast when I
seen a pair of checked pants rush by in the woods.
It was Uncle Lem. I could hear him thinking. “It ain't me!”
he was saying, real loud, inside his haid. “Git back to yer work,
Saunk. I ain’t within a mile of you. Yer Uncle Lem’s a fine old
feller and never tells lies. Think I’d fool ye, Saunkie boy?”
“You shore would,” I thunk back. “If you could. What’s up,
Uncle Lem?”
At that he slowed down and started to saunter back in a wide
circle.
“Oh, I just had an idy yer Maw might like a mess of
blackberries,” he thunk, kicking a pebble very nonchalant. “If
anybody asks you say you ain’t seen me. It’s no lie. You ain’t.”
“Uncle Lem,” I thunk, real loud, “I gave Maw my bounden
word I wouldn’t let you out of range without me along, account
of the last time you got away—”
“Now, now, my boy,” Uncle Lem thunk fast. “Let bygones
be bygones.”
“You just can’t say no to a friend, Uncle Lem,” I reminded
him, taking a last turn of the wire around the runner. “So you
wait a shake till I get this cream soured and we’ll both go
together, wherever it is you have in mind. ’ ’
I saw the checked pants among the bushes and he come out in
the open and give me a guilty smile. Uncle Lem’s a fat little
feller. He means well, I guess, but he can be talked into most
anything by most anybody, which is why we have to keep a
close eye on him.
“How you gonna do it?” he asked me, looking at the creamjug.
“Make the little critters work faster?”
“Uncle Lem!” I said. “You know better’n that. Cruelty to
dumb animals is something I can’t abide. Them there little
critters work hard enough souring milk the way it is. They’re
254
Henry Kuttner
such teentsy-weentsy fellers I kinda feel sorry for ’em. Why, you
can’t even see ’em without you go kinda crosseyed when you
look. Paw says they’re enzymes. But they can’t be. They’re too
teeny.”
“Teeny is as teeny does,” Uncle Lem said. “How you gonna
do it, then?”
“This here gadget,” I told him, kinda proud, “will send
Maw’s cream-jug ahead into next week some time. This weather,
don’t take cream more’n a couple of days but I’m giving it
plenty of time. When I bring it back—bingo, it’s sour.” I set the
jug on the sled.
“I never seen such a do-lass, brat,” Uncle Lem said, stepping
forward and bending a wire crosswise. “You better do it thataway,
on account of the thunderstorm next Tuesday. All right now,
shoot her off.”
So I shot her off. When she come back, sure enough, the
cream was sour enough to walk a mouse. Crawling up the can
there was a hornet from next week, which I squashed. Now that
was a mistake. I knowed it the minute I touched the jug. Dang
Uncle Lem, anyhow.
He jumped back into the underbrush, squealing real happy.
“Fooled you that time, you young stinker,” he yelled back.
“Let’s see you get your thumb outa the middle of next week!”
It was the time-lag done it. I mighta knowed. When he
crossed that wire he didn’t have no thunderstorm in mind at all.
Took me nigh onto ten minutes to work myself loose, account of
some feller called Inertia, who mixes in if you ain’t careful when
you fiddle around with time. I don’t understand much about it
myself. I ain’t got my growth yet. Uncle Lem says he’s already
forgot more’n I’ll ever know.
With that head start I almost lost him. Didn’t even have time
to change into my store-bought clothes and I knowed by the way
he was all dressed up fit to kill he was headed for somewheres
fancy.
He was worried, too. I kept running into little stray worrisome
thoughts he’d left behind him, hanging like teeny little mites of
clouds on the bushes. Couldn’t make out much on account of
they was shredding away by the time I got there but he’d shore
done something he shouldn’t. That much anybody coulda told.
They went something like this:
“Worry, worry—wish I hadn’t done it—oh, heaven help me if
Grandpaw ever finds out—oh, them nasty Pughs, how could I
a-been such a fool? Worry, worry—pore ole feller, such a good
soul, too, never done nobody no harm and look at me now.
COLD WAR
255
“That Saunk, too big for his britches, teach him a thing or
two, ha-ha. Oh, worry, worry—never mind, brace up, you good
ole boy, everything’s bound to turn out right in the end. You
deserve the best, bless you, Lemuel. Grandpaw’ll never find
out.’’
Well, I seen his checkered britches high-tailing through the
woods after a bit, but I didn’t catch up to him until he was down
the hill, across the picnic grounds at the edge of town and
pounding on the sill of the ticket-window at the railroad station
with a Spanish dubloon he snitched from Paw’s seachest.
It didn’t surprise me none to hear him asking for a ticket to
State Center. I let him think I hadn’t caught up. He argued
something tumble with the man behind the window but finally
he dug down in his britches and fetched up a silver dollar, and
the man calmed down.
The train was already puffing up smoke behind the station
when Uncle Lem darted around the comer. Didn’t leave me
much time but I made it too—just. I had to fly a little over the
last half-dozen yards but I don’t think anybody noticed.
Once when I was just a little shaver there was a Great Plague
in London, where we were living at the time, and all us Hogbens
had to clear out. I remember the hullabaloo in the city but
looking back now it don’t seem a patch on the hullabaloo in
State Center station when the train pulled in. Times have changed,
I guess.
Whistles blowing, horns honking, radios yelling bloody
murder—seems like every invention in the last two hundred
years had been noisier than the one before it. Made my head
ache until I fixed up something Paw once called a raised decibel
threshold, which was pure showing-off.
Uncle Lem didn’t know I was anywhere around. I took care to
think real quiet but he was so wrapped up in his worries he
wasn’t paying no mind to nothing. I followed him through the
crowds in the station and out onto a wide street full of traffic. It
was a relief to get away from the trains.
I always hate to think what’s going on inside the boiler, with
all the little bitty critters so small you can’t hardly see ’em, pore
things, flying around all hot and excited and bashing their heads
together. It seems plumb pitiable.
Of course, it just don’t do to think what’s happening inside the
automobiles that go by.
Uncle Lem knowed right where he was headed. He took off
down the street so fast I had to keep reminding myself not to fly.
256
Henry Kuttner
trying to keep up. I kept thinking I ought to get in touch with the
folks at home, in case this turned into something I couldn’t
handle, but I was plumb stopped everywhere I turned. Maw was
at the church social that afternoon and she whopped me the last
time I spoke to her outa thin air right in front of the Reverend
Jones. He ain’t used to us Hogbens yet.
Paw was daid drunk. No good trying to wake him up. And I
was scared to death I would wake the baby if I tried to call on
Grandpaw.
Uncle Lem scuttled right along, his checkered legs a-twinkling.
He was worrying at the top of his mind, too. He’d caught sight
of a crowd in a side-street gathered around a big truck, looking
up at a man standing on it and waving bottles in both hands.
He seemed to be making a speech about headaches. I could
hear him all the way to the comer. There was big banners tacked
along the sides of the truck that said, PUGH HEADACHE CURE.
“Oh, worry, worry!’’ Uncle Lem thunk. “Oh, bless my toes,
what am I going to do? I never dreamed anybody’d marry Lily
Lou Mutz. Oh, worry!”
Well, I reckon we’d all been surprised when Lily Lou Mutz up
and got herself a husband awhile back—around ten years ago, I
figgered. But what it had to do with Uncle Lem I couldn’t think.
Lily Lou was just about the ugliest female that ever walked.
Ugly ain’t no word for her, pore gal.
Grandpaw said once she put him in mind of a family name of
Gorgon he used to know. Not that she wasn’t a goodhearted
critter. Being so ugly, she put up with a lot in the way of rough
acting-up from the folks in the village—the riff-raff lot, I mean.
She lived by herself in a little shack up the mountain and she
musta been close onto forty when some feller from the other side
of the river come along one day and rocked the whole valley
back on its heels by asking her to marry up with him. Never saw
the feller myself but I heard tell he wasn’t no beauty-prize
winner neither.
Come to think of it, I told myself right then, looking at the
truck—come to think of it, feller’s name was Pugh.
Chapter 2 . A Fine Old Feller
Next thing I knowed, Uncle Lem had spotted somebody under
a lamp-post on the sidewalk, at the edge of the crowd. He trotted
over. It seemed to be a big gorilla and a little gorilla, standing there
watching the feller on the truck selling bottles with both hands.
COLD WAR
257
“Come and get it,” he was yelling. “Come and get your
bottle of Pugh’s Old Reliable Headache Cure while they last!”
“Well, Pugh, here I am,” Uncle Lem said, looking up at the
big gorilla. “Hello, Junior,” he said right afterward, glancing
down at the little gorilla. I seen him shudder a little.
You shore couldn’t blame him for that. Two nastier specimens
of the human race I never did see in all my bom days. If they
hadn’t been quite so pasty-faced or just the least mite slimmer,
maybe they wouldn’t have put me so much in mind of two
well-fed slugs, one growed-up and one baby-sized. The paw was
all dressed up in a Sunday-meeting suit with a big gold watch-
chain across his front and the way he strutted you’d a thought
he’d never had a good look in a mirror.
“Howdy, Lem,” he said, casual-like. “Right on time, I see.
Junior, say howdy to Mister Lem Hogben. You owe Mister
Hogben a lot, sonny.” And he laughed a mighty nasty laugh.
Junior paid him no mind. He had his beady little eyes fixed on
the crowd across the street. He looked about seven years old and
mean as they come.
“Shall I do it now, paw?” he asked in a squeaky voice. “Can
I let ’em have it now, paw? Huh, paw?” From the tone he used,
I looked to see if he’d got a machine-gun handy. I didn’t see
none but if looks was ever mean enough to kill Junior Pugh
could of mowed the crowd right down.
“Manly little feller, ain’t he, Lem?” Paw Pugh said, real
smug. “I tell you. I’m mighty proud of this youngster. Wish his
dear grandpaw coulda lived to see him. A fine old family line,
the Pughs is. Nothing like it anywhere. Only trouble is, Junior’s
the last of his race. You see why I got in touch with you, Lem.”
Uncle Lem shuddered again. “Yep,” he said. “I see, all
right. But you’re wasting your breath, Pugh. I ain’t a-gonna do
it.”
Young Pugh spun around in his tracks.
“Shall I let him have it, paw?” he squeaked, real eager.
“Shall I, paw? Now, paw? Huh?”
“Shaddup, sonny,” the big feller said and he whammed the
little feller across the side of the haid. Pugh’s hands was like
hams. He shore was built like a gorilla.
The way his great big arms swung down from them big
hunched shoulders, you’d of thought the kid would go flying
across the street when his paw whopped him one. But he was a
burly little feller. He just staggered a mite and then shook his
haid and went red in the face.
He yelled out, loud and squeaky, “Paw, I warned you! The
258 Henry Kuttner
last time you whammed me I warned you! Now I’m gonna let
you have it!”
He drew a deep breath and his two little teeny eyes got so
bright I coulda sworn they was gonna touch each other across the
middle of his nose. His pasty face got bright red.
“Okay, Junior,” Paw Pugh said, real hasty. “The crowd’s
ready for you. Don’t waste your strength on me, sonny. Let the
crowd have it!”
Now all this time I was standing at the edge of the crowd,
listening and watching Uncle Lem. But just then somebody
jiggled my arm and a thin kinda voice said to me, real polite,
“Excuse me, but may I ask a question?”
I looked down. It was a skinny man with a kind-hearted face.
He had a notebook in his hand.
“It’s all right with me,” I told him, polite. “Ask away,
mister.”
“I just wondered how you feel, that’s all,” the skinny man
said, holding his pencil over the notebook ready to write down
something.
“Why, peart,” I said. “Right kind of you to inquire. Hope
you’re feeling well too, mister.”
He shook his head, kind of dazed. “That’s the trouble,” he
said. “I just don’t understand it. I feel fine.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Fine day.”
“Everybody here feels fine,” he went right on, just like I
hadn’t spoke. “Barring normal odds, everybody’s in average
good health in this crowd. But in about five minutes or less, as I
figure it—” He looked at his wristwatch.
Just then somebody hit me right on top of the haid with a
red-hot sledge-hammer.
Now you shore can’t hurt a Hogben by hitting him on the
haid. Anybody’s a fool to try. I felt my knees buckle a little but I
was all right in a couple of seconds and I looked around to see
who’d whammed me.
Wasn’t a soul there. But oh my, the moaning and groaning
that was going up from that there crowd! People was a-clutching
at their foreheads and a-staggering around the street, clawing at
each other to get to that truck where the man was handing out the
bottles of headache cure as fast as he could take in the dollar
bills.
The skinny man with the kind face rolled up his eyes like a
duck in thunder.
“Oh, my head!” he groaned. “What did I tell you? Oh, my
COLD WAR
259
head!” Then he sort of tottered away, fishing in his pocket for
money.
Well, the family always did say I was slow-witted but you’d
have to be downright feeble-minded if you didn’t know there
was something mighty peculiar going on around here. I’m no
ninny, no matter what Maw says. I turned around and looked for
Junior Pugh.
There he stood, the fat-faced little varmint, red as a turkey-
gobbler, all swole up and his mean little eyes just a-flashing at
the crowd.
“It’s a hex,” I thought to myself, perfectly calm. “I’d never
have believed it but it’s a real hex. Now how in the world—”
Then I remembered Lily Lou Mutz and what Uncle Lem had
been thinking to himself. And I began to see the light.
The crowd had gone plumb crazy, fighting to get at the
headache cure. I purty near had to bash my way over toward
Uncle Lem. I figured it was past time I took a hand, on account
of him being so soft in the heart and likewise just about as soft in
the haid.
“Nosirree,” he was saying, firm-like. “I won’t do it. Not by
no manner of means I won’t.”
“Uncle Lem,” I said.
I bet he jumped a yard into the air.
“Saunk!” he squeaked. He flushed up and grinned sheepish
and then he looked mad, but I could tell he was kinda relieved,
too. “I told you not to foller me,” he said.
“Maw told me not to let you out of my sight,” I said. “I
promised Maw and us Hogbens never break a promise. What’s
going on here, Uncle Lem?”
“Oh, Saunk, everything’s gone dead wrong!” Uncle Lem
wailed out. “Here I am with a heart of gold and I’d just as soon
be dead! Meet Mister Ed Pugh, Saunk. He’s trying to get me
kilt.”
“Now Lem,” Ed Pugh said. “You know that ain’t so. I just
want my rights, that’s all. Pleased to meet you, young fellow.
Another Hogben, I take it. Maybe you can talk your uncle
into—”
“Excuse me for interrupting. Mister Pugh,” I said, real polite.
“But maybe you’d better explain. All this is purely a mystery to
me.”
He cleared his throat and threw his chest out, important-like. I
could tell this was something he liked to talk about. Made him
feel pretty big, I could see.
“I don’t know if you was acquainted with my dear departed
260
Henry Kuttner
wife, Lily Lou Mutz that was,’* he said. “This here’s our little
child, Junior. A fine little lad he is too. What a pity we didn’t
have eight or ten more just like him.’’ He sighed real deep.
“Well, that’s life. I’d hoped to marry young and be blessed
with a whole passel of younguns, being as how I’m the last of a
fine old line. I don’t mean to let it die out, neither.’’ Here he
gave Uncle Lem a mean look. Uncle Lem sorta whimpered.
“I ain’t a-gonna do it,’* he said. “You can’t make me do it.’’
“We’ll see about that,’’ Ed Pugh said, threatening. “Maybe
your young relative here will be more reasonable. I’ll have you
know I’m getting to be a power in this state and what I says
goes.’’
“Paw,’’ little Junior squeaked out just then, “Paw, they’re
kinda slowing down. Kin I give it to ’em double-strength this
time, Paw? Betcha I could kill a few if I let myself go. Hey,
Paw—’’
Ed Pugh made as if he was gonna clonk the little varmint
again, but I guess he thought better of it.
“Don’t interrupt your elders, sonny,’’ he said. “Paw’s busy.
Just tend to your job and shut up.’* He glanced out over the
moaning crowd. “Give that bunch over beyond the truck a little
more treatment,’’ he said. “They ain’t buying fast enough. But
no double-strength. Junior. You gotta save your energy. You’re a
growing boy.’’
He turned back to me. “Junior’s a talented child,’’ he said,
very proud. “As you can see. He inherited it from his dear
dead-and-gone mother, Lily Lou. I was telling you about Lily
Lou. It was my hope to marry young, like I said, but the way
things worked out, somehow I just didn’t get around to wifin’ till
I’d got well along into the prime of life.’’
He blew out his chest like a toadfrog, looking down admiring.
I never did see a man that thought better of himself. “Never
found a woman who’d look at—I mean, never found the right
woman,’’ he went on, “till the day I met Lily Lou Mutz.’’
“I know what you mean,’’ I said, polite. I did, too. He musta
searched a long, long ways before he found somebody ugly
enough herself to look twice at him. Even Lily Lou, pore soul,
musta thunk a long time afore she said yes.
“And that,’* Ed Pugh went on, “is where your Uncle Lem
comes in. It seems like he’d give Lily Lou a bewitchment quite
some while back.’’
“I never!’’ Uncle Lem squealed. “And anyway, how’d I
know she’d get married and pass it on to her child? Who’d ever
think Lily Lou would—’’
COLD WAR
261
“He gave her a bewitchment,” Ed Pugh went right on talking.
“Only she never told me till she was a-layin’ on her death-bed a
year ago. Lordy, I sure woulda whopped her good if I’d knowed
how she held out on me all them years! It was the hex Lemuel
gave her and she inherited it on to her little child.”
“I only done it to protect her,” Uncle Lem said, right quick.
“You know I’m speaking the truth, Saunk boy. Pore Lily Lou
was so pizon ugly, people used to up and heave a clod at her
now and then afore they could help themselves. Just automatic¬
like. Couldn’t blame ’em. I often fought down the impulse
myself.
“But pore Lily Lou, I shore felt sorry for her. You’ll never
know how long I fought down my good impulses, Saunk. But
my heart of gold does get me into messes. One day I felt so sorry
for the pore hideous critter I gave her the hexpower. Anybody *d
have done the same, Saunk.”
“How’d you do it?” I asked, real interested, thinking it might
come in handy someday to know. I’m young yet, and I got lots
to learn.
Well, he started to tell me and it was kinda mixed up. Right at
first I got a notion some furrin feller named Gene Chromosome
had done it for him and after I got straight on that part he’d gone
cantering off into a rigamarole about the alpha waves of the
brain.
Shucks, I knowed that much my own self. Everybody musta
noticed the way them little waves go a-sweeping over the tops of
people’s haids when they’re thinking. I’ve watched Grandpaw
sometimes when he had as many as six hundred different thoughts
follering each other up and down them little paths where his
brain is. Hurts my eyes to look too close when Grandpaw’s
thinking.
“So that’s how it is, Saunk,” Uncle Lem wound up. “And
this here little rattlesnake’s inherited the whole shebang.”
“Well, why don’t you get this here Gene Chromosome feller
to unscramble Junior and put him back the way other people
are?” I asked. “I can see how easy you could do it. Look here.
Uncle Lem.” I focused down real sharp on Junior and made my
eyes go funny the way you have to when you want to look inside
a person.
Sure enough, I seen just what Uncle Lem meant. There was
teensy-weensy little chains of fellers, all hanging onto each other
for dear life, and skinny little rods jiggling around inside them
awful teensy cells everybody’s made of—-except maybe Little
Sam, our baby. ^
262
Henry Kuttner
“Look here, Uncle Lem,” I said. “All you did when you
gave Lily Lou the hex was to twitch these here little rods over
that-away and patch ’em onto them little chains that wiggle so
fast. Now why can’t you switch ’em back again and make Junior
behave himself? It oughta be easy.’’
“It would be easy,’’ Uncle Lem kinda sighed at me. “Saunk,
you’re a scatterbrain. You wasn’t listening to what I said. I can’t
switch ’em back without I kill Junior.’’
“The world would be a better place,*’ I said.
“I know it would. But you know what we promised Grandpaw?
No more killings.’*
“But Uncle Lem!’’ I bust out. “This is tumble! You mean
this nasty little rattlesnake’s gonna go on all his life hexing
people?’’
“Worse than that, Saunk,’* pore Uncle Lem said, almost
crying. “He’s gonna pass the power on to his descendants, just
like Lily Lou passed it on to him.’*
For a minute it sure did look like a dark prospect for the
human race. Then I laughed.
“Cheer up. Uncle Lem,’’ I said. “Nothing to worry about.
Look at the little toad. There ain’t a female critter alive who’d
come within a mile of him. Already he’s as repulsive as his
daddy. And remember, he’s Lily Lou Mutz’s child, too. Maybe
he’ll get even horribler as he grows up. One thing’s sure—he
ain’t never gonna get married.’’
“Now there’s where you’re wrong,’* Ed Pugh busted in,
talking real loud. He was red in the face and he looked mad.
“Don’t think I ain’t been listening,’’ he said. “And don’t think
I’m gonna forget what you said about my child. I told you I was
a power in this town. Junior and me can go a long way, using his
talent to help us.
“Already I’ve got on to the board of aldermen here and
there’s gonna be a vacancy in the state senate come next
week—unless the old coot I have in mind’s a lot tougher than he
looks. So I’m warning you, young Hogben, you and your family’s
gonna pay for them insults.’’
“Nobody oughta get mad when he hears the gospel truth about
himself,’’ I said. “Junior is a repulsive specimen.’’
“He just takes getting used to,’’ his paw said. “All us Pughs
is hard to understand. Deep, I guess. But we got our pride. And
I’m gonna make sure the family line never dies out. Never, do
you hear that, Lemuel?’ ’
Uncle Lem just shut his eyes up tight and shook his head fast.
COLD WAR
263
“Nosirree,” he said. “I’ll never do it. Never, never, never,
never—’ ’
“Lemuel,” Ed Pugh said, real sinister. “Lemuel, do you
want me to set Junior on you?”
“Oh, there ain’t no use in that,” I said. “You seen him try to
hex me along with the crowd, didn’t you? No manner of use,
Mister Pugh. Can’t hex a Hogben.”
“Well—” He looked around, searching his mind. “Hm-m.
I’ll think of something. I’ll—soft-hearted, aren’t you? Promised
your Grandpappy you wouldn’t kill nobody, hey? Lemuel, open
your eyes and look over there across the street. See that sweet
old lady walking with the cane? How’d you like it if I had Junior
drop her dead in her tracks?”
Uncle Lemuel just squeezed his eyes tighter shut.
“I won’t look. I don’t know the sweet old thing. If she’s that
old, she ain’t got much longer anyhow. Maybe she’d be better
off dead. Probably got rheumatiz something fierce.”
“All right, then, how about that purty young girl with
the baby in her arms? Look, Lemuel. Mighty sweet-looking little
baby. Pink ribbon in its bonnet, see? Look at them dimples.
Junior, get ready to blight them where they stand. Bubonic
plague to start with maybe. And after that—”
“Uncle Lem,” I said, feeling uneasy. “I dunno what Grandpaw
would say to this. Maybe—”
Uncle Lem popped his eyes wide open for just a second. He
glared at me, frantic.
“I can’t help it if I’ve got a heart of gold,” he said. “I’m a
fine old feller and everybody picks on me. Well, I won’t stand
for it. You can push me just so far. Now I don’t care if Ed Pugh
kills off the whole human race. I don’t care if Grandpaw does
find out what I done. I don’t care a hoot about nothing no
more.” He gave a kind of wild laugh.
“I’m gonna get out from under. I won’t know nothing about
nothing. I’m gonna snatch me a few winks, Saunk.”
And with that he went rigid all over and fell flat on his face on
the sidewalk, stiff as a poker.
Chapter 3. Over a Barrel
Well, worried as I was, I had to smile. Uncle Lem’s kinda
cute sometimes. I knowed he’d put hisself to sleep again, the
way he always does when trouble catches up with him. Paw says
it’s catalepsy but cats sleep a lot lighter than that.
264
Henry Kuttner
Uncle Lem hit the sidewalk flat and kinda bounced a little.
Junior give a howl of joy. I guess maybe he figgered he’d had
something to do with Uncle Lem falling over. Anyhow, seeing
somebody down and helpless. Junior naturally rushed over and
pulled his foot back and kicked Uncle Lem in the side of the
haid.
Well, like I said, us Hogbens have got pretty tough haids.
Junior let out a howl. He started dancing around nursing his foot
in both hands.
“I’ll hex you good!’’ he yelled at Uncle Lem. “I’ll hex you
good, you—you ole Hogben, you!’’ He drew a deep breath and
turned purple in the face and—
And then it happened.
It was like a flash of lightning. I don’t take no stock in hexes,
and I had a fair idea of what was happening, but it took me by
surprise. Paw tried to explain to me later how it worked and he
said it just stimulated the latent toxins inherent in the organism.
It made Junior into a catalytoxic agent on account of the way the
rearrangement of the desoxyribonucleic acid his genes was made
of worked on the kappa waves of his nasty little brain, stepping
them up as much as thirty microvolts. But shucks, you know
Paw. He’s too lazy to figger the thing out in English. He just
steals them fool words out of other folks’ brains when he needs
’em.
What really happened was that all the pizon that little varmint
had bottled up in him, ready to let go on the crowd, somehow
seemed to r’ar back and smack Uncle Lem right in the face. I
never seen such a hex. And the awful part was—it worked.
Because Uncle Lem wasn’t resisting a mite now he was
asleep. Red-hot pokers wouldn’t have waked him up and I
wouldn’t put red-hot pokers past little Junior Pugh. But he didn’t
need ’em this time. The hex hit Uncle Lem like a thunderbolt.
He turned pale green right before our eyes.
Somehow it seemed to me a tumble silence fell as Uncle Lem
went green. I. looked up, surprised. Then I realized what was
happening. All that pitiful moaning and groaning from the crowd
had stopped.
People was swigging away at their bottles of headache cure,
rubbing their foreheads and kinda laughing weak-like with relief.
Junior’s whole complete hex had gone into Uncle Lem and the
crowd’s headaches had naturally stopped right off.
“What’s happened here?’’ somebody called out in a kinda
familiar voice. “Has that man fainted? Why don’t you help him?
Here, let me by—I’m a doctor.’’
COLD WAR
265
It was the skinny man with the kind-looking face. He was still
drinking out of the headache bottle as he pushed his way through
the crowd toward us but he’d put his notebook away. When he
saw Ed Pugh he flushed up angrylike.
“So it’s you, is it, Alderman Pugh?’’ he said. “How is it
you’re always around when trouble starts? What did you do to
this poor man, anyhow? Maybe this time you’ve gone too far.’’
“I didn’t do a thing,’’ Ed Pugh said. “Never touched him.
You watch your tongue, Dr. Brown, or you’ll regret it. I’m a
powerful man in this here town.’’
“Look at that!*’ Dr. Brown yells, his voice going kinda
squeaky as he stares down at Uncle Lem. “The man’s dying!
Call an ambulance, somebody, quick!’’
Uncle Lem was changing color again. I had to laugh a little,
inside my haid. I knowed what was happening and it was kinda
funny. Everybody’s got a whole herd of germs and viruses and
suchlike critters swarming through them all the time, of course.
When Junior’s hex hit Uncle Lem it stimulated the entire herd
something tumble, and a flock of little bitty critters Paw calls
antibodies had to get to work pronto. They ain’t really as sick as
they look, being white by nature.
Whenever a pizon starts chawing on you these pale little
fellers grab up their shooting-irons and run like crazy to the
battlefield in your insides. Such fighting and yelling and swear¬
ing you never seen. It’s a regular Bull Run.
That was going on right then inside Uncle Lem. Only us
Hogbens have got a special militia of our own inside us. And
they got called up real fast.
They was swearing and kicking and whopping the enemy so
hard Uncle Lem had gone from pale green to a sort of purplish
color, and big yeller and blue spots was beginning to bug out all
over him where it showed. He looked oncommon sick. Course it
didn’t do him no real harm. The Hogbens militia can lick any
germ that breathes.
But he sure looked revolting.
The skinny doctor crouched down beside Uncle Lem and felt
his pulse.
“Now you’ve done it,’’ he said, looking up at Ed Pugh. “I
don’t know how you’ve worked this, but for once you’ve gone
too far. This man seems to have bubonic plague. I’ll see you’re
put under control this time and that young Kallikak of yours,
too.’’
Ed Pugh just laughed a little. But I could see he was mad.
“Don’t you worry about me. Dr. Brown,’’ he said, mean.
266
Henry Kuttner
“When I get to be governor—and I got my plans all made—that
there hospital you’re so proud of ain’t gonna operate on state
funds no more. A fine thing!
“Folks laying around in hospitals eating their fool heads off!
Make ’em get out and plough, that’s what I say. Us Pughs never
gets sick. I got lots of better uses for state money than paying
folks to lay around in bed when I’m governor.’’
All the doctor said was, “Where’s that ambulance?”
“If you mean that big long car making such a noise,” I said,
“it’s about three miles off but coming fast. Uncle Lem don’t
need no help, though. He’s just having an attack. We get ’em in
the family all the time. It don’t mean nothing.”
“Good heavens!” the doc said, staring down at Uncle Lem.
“You mean he’s had this before and lived?” Then he looked up
at me and smiled all of a sudden. “Oh, I see,” he said. “Afraid
of hospitals, are you? Well, don’t worry. We won’t hurt him.”
That surprised me some. He was a smart man. I’d fibbed a
little for just that reason. Hospitals is no place for Hogbens.
People in hospitals are too danged nosy. So I called Uncle Lem
real loud, inside my head.
“Uncle Lem!” I hollered, only thinking it, not out loud.
“Uncle Lem, wake up quick! Grandpaw’ll nail your hide to the
bam door if n you let yourself get took to a hospital. You want
’em to find out about them two hearts you got in your chest?
And the way your bones are fixed and the shape of your gizzard?
Uncle Lem! Wake up!”
It wasn’t no manner of use. He never even twitched.
Right then I began to get really scared. Uncle Lem had sure
landed me in the soup. There I was with all that responsibility on
my shoulders and I didn’t have the least idea how to handle it.
I’m just a young feller after all. I can hardly remember much
farther back than the great fire of London, when Charles II was
king, with all them long curls a-hanging on his shoulders. On
him, though, they looked good.
“Mister Pugh,” I said, “you’ve got to call off Junior. I can’t
let Uncle Lem get took to the hospital. You know I can’t.”
“Junior, pour it on,” Mister Pugh said, grinning real nasty.
“I want a little talk with young Hogben here.” The doctor
looked up, puzzled, and Ed Pugh said, “Step over here a mite,
Hogben. I want a private word with you. Junior, bear down!”
Uncle Lem’s yellow and blue spots got green rings around
their outside edges. The doctor sorta gasped and Ed Pugh took
my arm and pulled me back. When we was out of earshot he said
to me, confidential, fixing me with his tiny little eyes:
COLD WAR
267
“I reckon you know what I want, Hogben. Lem never did say
he couldn't , he only said he wouldn’t, so I know you folks can
do it for me.”
“Just exactly what is it you want, Mister Pugh?” I asked him.
“You know. I want to make sure our fine old family line goes
on. I want there should always be Pughs. I had so much trouble
getting married off myself and I know Junior ain’t going to be
easy to wife. Women don’t have no taste nowadays.
“Since Lily Lou went to glory there hasn’t been a woman on
earth ugly enough to marry a Pugh and I’m skeered Junior’ll be
the last of a great line. With his talent I can’t bear the thought.
You just fix it so our family won’t never die out and I’ll have
Junior take the hex off Lemuel.”
“If I fixed it so your line didn’t die out,” I said, “I’d be
fixing it so everybody else’s line would die out, just as soon as
there was enough Pughs around.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Ed Pugh asked, grinning. “Way I
see it we’re good strong stock.” He flexed his gorilla arms. He
was taller than me, even. “No harm in populatin’ the world with
good stock, is there? I figger given time enough us Pughs could
conquer the whole danged world. And you’re gonna help us do
it, young Hogben.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no! Even if I knowed how—”
There was a tumble noise at the end of the street and the
crowd scattered to make way for the ambulance, which drawed
up at the curb beside Uncle Lem. A couple of fellers in white
coats jumped out with a sort of pallet on sticks. Dr. Brown stood
up, looking real relieved.
“Thought you’d never get here,” he said. “This man’s a
quarantine case, I think. Heaven knows what kind of results
we’ll find when we start running tests on him. Hand me my bag
out of the back there, will you? I want my stethoscope. There’s
something funny about this man’s heart.”
Well, my heart sunk right down into my boots. We was goners
and I knowed it—the whole Hogben tribe. Once them doctors
and scientists find out about us we’ll never know a moment’s
peace again as long as we live. We won’t have no more privacy
than a corncob.
Ed Pugh was watching me with a nasty grin on his pasty face.
“Worried, huh?” he said. “You gotta right to be worried. I
know about you Hogbens. All witches. Once they get Lem in the
hospital, no telling what they’ll find out. Against the law to be
268
Henry Kuttner
witches, probably. You’ve got about half a minute to make up
your mind, young Hogben. What do you say?”
Well, what could I say? I couldn’t give him a promise like he
was asking, could I? Not and let the whole world be overrun by
hexing Pughs. Us Hogbens live a long time. We’ve got some
pretty important plans for the future when the rest of the world
begins to catch up with us. But if by that time the rest of the
world is all Pughs, it won’t hardly seem worth while, somehow.
I couldn’t say yes.
But if I said no Uncle Lem was a goner. Us Hogbens was
doomed either way, it seemed to me.
Looked like there was only one thing to do. I took a deep breath,
shut my eyes, and let out a desperate yell inside my head.
“ Grandpaw!” I hollered.
“Yes, my boy?” said a big deep voice in the middle of my
brain. You’d athought he’d been right alongside me all the time,
just waiting to be called. He was a hundred-odd miles off, and
sound asleep. But when a Hogben calls in the tone of voice /
called in he’s got a right to expect an answer—quick. I got it.
Mostly Grandpaw woulda dithered around for fifteen minutes,
asking cross questions and not listening to the answers, and
talking in all kinds of queer old-fashioned dialects, like Sanskrit,
he’s picked up through the years. But this time he seen it was
serious.
“Yes, my boy?” was all he said.
I flapped my mind wide open like a school-book in front of
him. There wasn’t no time for questions and answers. The doc
was getting out his dingus to listen to Uncle Lem’s two hearts
beating out of tune and once he heard that the jig would be up
for us Hogbens.
“Unless you let me kill ’em, Grandpaw,” I added. Because
by that time I knowed he’d read the whole situation from start to
finish in one fast glance.
It seemed to me he was quiet an awful long time after that.
The doc had got the dingus out and he was fitting its little black
arms into his ears. Ed Pugh was watching me like a hawk. Junior
stood there all swole up with pizon, blinking his mean little eyes
around for somebody to shoot it at. I was half hoping he’d pick
on me. I’d worked out a way to make it bounce back in his face
and there was a chance it might even kill him.
I heard Grandpaw give a sorta sigh in my mind.
“They’ve got us over a barrel, Saunk,” he said. I remember
being a little surprised he could speak right plain English when
he wanted to. “Tell Pugh we’ll do it.”
COLD WAR
269
“But Grandpaw—” I said.
“Do as I say!" It gave me a headache, he spoke so firm.
“Quick, Saunk! Tell Pugh we’ll give him what he wants.”
Well, I didn’t dare disobey. But this once I really came close
to defying Grandpaw.
It stands to reason even a Hogben has got to get senile
someday, and I thought maybe old age had finally set in with
Grandpaw at last.
What I thunk at him was, “All right, if you say so, but I sure
hate to do it. Seems like if they’ve got us going and coming, the
least we can do is take our medicine like Hogbens and keep all
that pizon bottled up in Junior stead of spreading it around the
world.” But out loud I spoke to Mister Pugh.
“All right, Mister Pugh,” I said, real humble. “You win.
Only, call off your hex. Quick, before it’s too late.”
Chapter 4. Pughs A-Coming
Mister Pugh had a great big yellow automobile, low-slung,
without no top. It went awful fast. And it was sure awful noisy.
Once I’m pretty sure we run over a small boy in the road but
Mister Pugh paid him no mind and I didn’t dare say nothing.
Like Grandpaw said, the Pughs had us over a barrel.
It took quite a lot of palaver before I convinced ’em they’d
have to come back to the homestead with me. That was part of
Grandpaw’s orders.
“How do I know you won’t murder us in cold blood once you
get us out there in the wilderness?” Mister Pugh asked.
“I could kill you right here if I wanted,” I told him. “I would
too but Grandpaw says no. You’re safe if Grandpaw says so,
Mister Pugh. The word of a Hogben ain’t never been broken
yet.”
So he agreed, mostly because I said we couldn’t work the
spells except on home territory. We loaded Uncle Lem into the
back of the car and took off for the hills. Had quite an argument
with the doc, of course. Uncle Lem sure was stubborn.
He wouldn’t wake up nohow but once Junior took the hex off
Uncle Lem faded out fast to a good healthy color again. The doc
just didn’t believe it coulda happened, even when he saw it.
Mister Pugh had to threaten quite a lot before we got away. We
left the doc sitting on the curb, muttering to himself and rubbing
his haid dazed like.
270
Henry Kuttner
I could feel Grandpaw a-studying the Pughs through my mind
all the way home. He seemed to be sighing and kinda shaking
his haid—such as it is—and working out problems that didn’t
make no manner of sense to me.
When we drawed up in front of the house there wasn’t a soul
in sight. I could hear Grandpaw stirring and muttering on his
gunnysack in the attic but Paw seemed to have went invisible
and he was too drunk to tell me where he was when I asked. The
baby was asleep. Maw was still at the church sociable and
Grandpaw said to leave her be.
“We can work this out together, Saunk,** he said as soon as I
got outa the car. “I’ve been thinking. You know that sled you
fixed up to sour your Maw’s cream this morning? Drag it out,
son. Drag it out.’’
I seen in a flash what he had in mind. “Oh, no, Grandpaw!’’ I
said, right out loud.
“Who you talking to?’’ Ed Pugh asked, lumbering down outa
the car. “I don’t see nobody. This your homestead? Ratty old
dump, ain’t it? Stay close to me. Junior. I don’t trust these folks
any farther’n I can see ’em.’’
“Get the sled, Saunk,’’ Grandpaw said, very firm. “I got it
all worked out. We’re gonna send these two gorillas right back
through time, to a place they’ll really fit.’’
“But Grandpaw!’’ I hollered, only inside my head this time.
“Let’s talk this over. Lemme get Maw in on it anyhow. Paw’s
right smart when he’s sober. Why not wait till he wakes up? I
think we oughta get the Baby in on it too. I don’t think sending
’em back through time’s a good idea at all, Grandpaw.’’
“The Baby’s asleep,’’ Grandpaw said. “You leave him be.
He read himself to sleep over his Einstein, bless his little soul.’’
I think the thing that worried me most was the way Grandpaw
was talking plain English. He never does when he’s feeling
normal. I thought maybe his old age had all caught up with him
at one bank, and knocked all the sense outa his—so to speak—haid.
“Grandpaw,*’ I said, trying to keep calm. “Don’t you see? If
we send ’em back through time and give ’em what we promised
it’ll make everything a million times worse than before. You
gonna strand ’em back there in the year one and break your
promise to ’em?”
“Saunk!” Grandpaw said.
“I know. If we promised we’d make sure the Pugh line won’t
die out, then we gotta make sure. But if we send ’em back to the
year one that’ll mean all the time before then and now they’ll
COLD WAR
271
spend spreading out and spreading out. More Pughs every
generation.
“Grandpaw, five seconds after they hit the year one. I’m
liable to feel my two eyes rush together in my haid and my face
go all fat and pasty like Junior. Grandpaw, everybody in the
world may be Pughs if we give ’em that much time to spread out
in!”
“Cease thy chirming, thou chilce dolt,” Grandpaw hollered.
“Do my bidding, young fool!”
That made me feel a little better but not much. I went and
dragged out the sled. Mister Pugh put up quite a argument about
that.
“I ain’t rid on a sled since I was so high,” he said. “Why
should I git on one now? This is some trick. I won’t do it.”
Junior tried to bite me.
“Now Mister Pugh,” I said, “you gotta cooperate or we won’t
get nowheres. I know what I’m doing. Just step up here and set
down. Junior, there’s room for you in front. That’s fine.”
If he hadn’t seen how worried I was I don’t think he’d a-done
it. But I couldn’t hide how I was feeling.
“Where’s your Grandpaw?” he asked, uneasy. “You’re not
going to do this whole trick by yourself, are you? Young igno¬
rant feller like you? I don’t like it. Suppose you made a mistake?”
“We give our word,” I reminded him. “Now just kindly shut
up and let me concentrate. Or maybe you don’t want the Pugh
line to last forever?”
“That was the promise,” he says, settling himself down.
“You gotta do it. Lemme know when you commence.”
“All right, Saunk,” Grandpaw says from the attic, right brisk.
“Now you watch. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two. Look
sharp. Focus your eyes down and pick out a gene. Any gene.”
Bad as I felt about the whole thing I couldn’t help being
interested. When Grandpaw does a thing he does it up brown.
Genes are mighty slippery little critters, spindle-shaped and aw¬
ful teensy. They’re partners with some skinny guys called
chromosomes, and the two of ’em show up everywhere you
look, once you’ve got your eyes focused just right.
“A good dose of ultraviolet ought to do the trick,” Grandpaw
muttered. “Saunk, you’re closer.”
I said, “All right, Grandpaw,” and sort of twiddled the light
as it sifted down through the pines above the Pughs. Ultraviolet’s
the color at the other end of the line, where the colors stop having
names for most people.
Grandpaw said, “Thanks, son. Hold it for a minute.”
272
Henry Kuttner
The genes began to twiddle right in time with the light waves.
Junior said, “Paw, something’s tickling me.”
Ed Pugh said, “Shut up.”
Grandpaw was muttering to himself. I’m pretty sure he stole
the words from that perfesser we keep in the bottle, but you can’t
tell, with Grandpaw. Maybe he was the first person to make ’em
up in the beginning.
“The euchromatin,” he kept muttering. “That ought to fix it.
Ultraviolet gives us hereditary mutation and the euchromatin
contains the genes that transmit heredity. Now that other stuffs
heterochromatin and that produces evolutionary change of the
cataclysmic variety.
“Very good, very good. We can always use a new species.
Hum-m-m. About six bursts of heterochromatinic activity ought
to do it.” He was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Ich am
eldre and ek magti! Okay, Saunk, take it away.”
I let the ultraviolet go back where it came from.
“The year one, Grandpaw?” I asked, very doubtful.
“That’s close enough,” he said. “Wite thou the way?”
“Oh yes, Grandpaw,” I said. And I bent over and give them
the necessary push.
The last thing I heard was Mister Pugh’s howl.
“What’s that you’re doin’?” he hollered at me. “What’s the
idea? Look out, there, young Hogben or—what’s this? Where
we goin’? Young Saunk, I warn you, if this is some trick I’ll set
Junior on you! I’ll send you such a hex as even you-u ...”
Then the howl got real thin and small and far away until it wasn’t
no more than the noise a mosquito makes. After that it was
mighty quiet in the dooryard.
I stood there all braced, ready to stop myself from turning into
a Pugh if I could. Them little genes is tricky fellers.
I knowed Grandpaw had made a tumble mistake.
The minute them Pughs hit the year one and started to bounce
back through time toward now I knowed what would happen.
I ain’t sure how long ago the year one was, but there was
plenty of time for the Pughs to populate the whole planet. I put
two fingers against my nose to keep my eyes from banging each
other when they started to rush together in the middle like all us
Pughs’ eyes do—
“You ain’t a Pugh yet, son,” Grandpaw said, chuckling.
“Kin ye see ’em?”
“No,” I said. “What’s happening?”
“The sled’s starting to slow down,” he said. “Now it’s
COLD WAR
273
stopped. Yep, it’s the year one, all right. Look at all them men
and women flockin’ outa the caves to greet their new company!
My, my, what great big shoulders the men have got. Bigger even
than Paw Pugh’s.
“An’ ugh—just look at the women! I declare, little Junior’s
positively handsome alongside them folks! He won’t have no
trouble finding a wife when the time comes.’’
“But Grandpaw, that’s tumble!’’ I said.
“Don’t sass your elders, Saunk,’’ Grandpaw chuckled. “Looka
there now. Junior’s just pulled a hex. Another little child fell
over flat on his ugly face. Now the little child’s mother is
knocking Junior endwise. Now his pappy’s sailing into Paw
Pugh. Look at that fight! Just look at it! Oh, I guess the Pugh
family’s well took care of, Saunk.’’
“But what about our family?’’ I said, almost wailing.
“Don’t you worry,’’ Grandpaw said. “Time’ll take care of
that. Wait a minute, let me watch. Hm-m. A generation don’t
take long when you know how to look. My, my, what ugly little
critters the ten baby Pughs was! They was just like their pappy
and their grandpappy.
“I wish Lily Lou Mutz could see her grandbabies. I shorely
do. Well, now, ain’t that cute? Every one of them babies growed
up in a flash, seems like, and each of ’em has got ten babies of
their own. I like to see my promises working out, Saunk. I said
I’d do this, and I done it.’’
I just moaned.
“All right,’’ Grandpaw said. “Let’s jump ahead a couple of
centuries. Yep, still there and spreading like crazy. Family like¬
ness is still strong, too. Hum-m. Another thousand years and—
well, I declare! If it ain’t Ancient Greece! Hasn’t changed a bit,
neither. What do you know, Saunk!’’ He cackled right out,
tickled pink.
“Remember what I said once about Lily Lou putting me in
mind of an old friend of mine named Gorgon? No wonder!
Perfectly natural. You ought to see Lily Lou’s great-great-great-
grandbabies! No, on second thought, it’s lucky you can’t. Well,
well, this is shore interesting.’’
He was still about three minutes. Then I heard him laugh.
“Bang,” he said. “First heterochromatinic burst. Now the
changes start.’’
“What changes, Grandpaw?’’ I asked, feeling pretty miserable.
“The changes,” he said, “that show your old Grandpaw ain’t
such a fool as you thought. I know what I’m doing. They go
274
Henry Kuttner
fast, once they start. Look there now, that’s the second change.
Look at them little genes mutate!”
“You mean,” I said, “I ain’t gonna turn into a Pugh after all?
But Grandpaw, I thought we’d promised the Pughs their line
wouldn’t die out.”
“I’m keeping my promise,” Grandpaw said, dignified. “The
genes will carry the Pugh likeness right on to the toot of the
judgment horn, just like I said. And the hex power goes right
along with it.”
Then he laughed.
“You better brace yourself, Saunk,” he said. “When Paw
Pugh went sailing off into the year one seems like he uttered a
hex threat, didn’t he? Well, he wasn’t fooling. It’s a-coming at
you right now.”
“Oh, Lordy!” I said. “There’ll be a million of ’em by the
time they get here! Grandpaw! What’ll I do?”
“Just brace yourself,” Grandpaw said, real unsympathetic.
“A million, you think? Oh, no, lots more than a million.”
“How many?” I asked him.
He started in to tell me. You may not believe it but he’s still
telling me. It takes that long. There’s that many of ’em.
You see, it was like with that there Jukes family that lived
down south of here. The bad ones was always a mite worse than
their children and the same dang thing happened to Gene Chro¬
mosome and his kin, so to speak. The Pughs stayed Pughs and
they kept the hex power—and I guess you might say the Pughs
conquered the whole world, after all.
But it could of been worse. The Pughs could of stayed the
same size down through the generations. Instead they got
smaller—a whole lot smaller. When I knowed ’em they was
bigger than most folks—Paw Pugh, anyhow.
But by the time they’d done filtering the generations from the
year one, they’d shrunk so much them little pale fellers in the
blood was about their size. And many a knock-down drag-out
fight they have with ’em, too.
Them Pugh genes took such a beating from the heterochromatinic
bursts Grandpaw told me about that they got whopped all outa
their proper form. You might call ’em a virus now—and of
course a virus is exactly the same thing as a gene, except the
virus is friskier. But heavens above, that’s like saying the Jukes
boys is exactly the same as George Washington!
The hex hit me—hard.
I sneezed something tumble. Then I heard Uncle Lem sneez¬
ing in his sleep, lying back there in the yaller car. Grandpaw was
COLD WAR
275
still droning on about how many Pughs was a-coming at me right
that minute, so there wasn’t no use asking questions. I fixed my
eyes different and looked right down into the middle of that
sneeze to see what had tickled me—
Well, you never seen so many Junior Pughs in all your bom
days! It was the hex, all right. Likewise, them Pughs is still
busy, hexing everybody on earth, off and on. They’ll do it for
quite a time, too, since the Pugh line has got to go on forever,
account of Grandpaw’s promise.
They tell me even the microscopes ain’t never yet got a good
look at certain viruses. The scientists are sure in for a surprise
someday when they focus down real close and see all them
pasty-faced little devils, ugly as sin, with their eyes set real close
together, wiggling around hexing everybody in sight.
It took a long time—since the year one, that is—but Gene
Chromosome fixed it up, with Grandpaw’s help. So Junior Pugh
ain’t a pain in the neck no more, so to speak.
But I got to admit he’s an awful cold in the haid.
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
by James H. Schmitz (1911—1981)
Astounding Science Fiction, December
The late James Schmitz was the creator ofTelzey Amberton,
a female secret agent who starred in such exciting novels as
The Universe Against Her (1964) and The Lion Game (1973)
as well as the story collection The Telzey Toy (1973). Telzey
was certainly ahead of her time—her adventurous and amo¬
rous escapades were fully worthy of male protagonists, and
she is frequently referred to in defenses of science fiction’s
earlier anti-female bias.
Telzey is also a telepath, like the three Witches of Karres.
This was no accident, because John Campbell’s postwar
Astounding was a center for “ psi” stories of all types, one of
several seeming obsessions of this great editor. Astounding
began to enter a period of slow decline as the 1940s ended,
brought on in no small measure by the magazine boom which
saw the creation of powerful competition in the form of
Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It
is also possible that by this time Campbell had done as much
for science fiction as he could.
Astounding accounts for less than half of the stories in this
book. — M.H.G.
(Witches come in all sorts. During the European witch-
hunting mania, witches were unredeemably evil, and in league
with the Devil.
It depends on your definition, of course. All through the
Christian centuries there was the survival of remnants of
pre-Christian ritual which had not been absorbed into
Christianity. The practitioners of such archaic rites were
members of a competing religion, and the only competing
276
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
277
religion that Christian enthusiasts recognized was devil-worship.
From which it followed—
For those who don't take witchcraft seriously , but who
write stories about witches , witches (and their male counter¬
parts, the wizards or warlocks) are only practitioners of
magic. And like the practitioners of technology, they can do
so for good or for evil. Thus, in The Wizard of Oz we have
the Wicked Witch of the West, immortalized forever by Marga¬
ret Hamilton, while we also have the Good Witch, Glinda,
much less convincingly played by Billie Burke.
In the running, however, for the most charming witches are
the three little girls who are ‘ The Witches of Karres' ’ as
portrayed by James H. Schmitz. — I.A.)
I.
It was around the hub of the evening on the planet of Porlumma
that Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of
Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres.
It was just plain fate, so far as he could see.
He was feeling pretty good as he left a high-priced bar on a
cobbly street near the spaceport, with the intention of returning
straight to his ship. There hadn’t been an argument, exactly. But
someone grinned broadly, as usual, when the captain pronounced
the name of his native system; and the captain had pointed out
then, with considerable wit, how much more ridiculous it was to
call a planet Porlumma, for instance, then to call it Nikkeldepain.
He proceeded to collect a gradually increasing number of
pained stares by a detailed comparison of the varied, interesting
and occasionally brilliant role Nikkeldepain had played in history
with Porlumma’s obviously dull and dumpy status as a sixth-rate
Empire outpost.
In conclusion, he admitted frankly that he wouldn’t care to be
found dead on Porlumma.
Somebody muttered loudly in Imperial Universum that in that
case it might be better if he didn’t hang around Porlumma too
long. But the captain only smiled politely, paid for his two
drinks and left.
There was no point in getting into a rhubarb on one of these
border planets. Their citizens still had an innocent notion that
they ought to act like frontiersmen—but then the Law always
showed up at once.
He felt pretty good. Up to the last four months of his young
278
James H . Schmitz
life, he had never looked on himself as being particularly patriotic.
But compared to most of the Empire’s worlds, Nikkeldepain was
downright attractive in its stuffy way. Besides, he was returning
there solvent—would they ever be surprised!
And awaiting him, fondly and eagerly, was Illyla, the Miss
Onswud, fair daughter of the mighty Councilor Onswud, and the
captain’s secretly affianced for almost a year. She alone had
believed in him!
The captain smiled and checked at a dark cross-street to get
his bearings on the spaceport beacon. Less than half a mile
away— He set off again. In about six hours, he’d be beyond the
Empire’s space borders and headed straight for Illyla.
Yes, she alone had believed! After the prompt collapse of the
captain’s first commercial venture—a miffel-fur farm, largely on
capital borrowed from Councilor Onswud—the future had looked
very black. It had even included a probable ten-year stretch of
penal servitude for “willful and negligent abuse of intrusted
monies.’’ The laws of Nikkeldepain were rough on debtors.
“But you’ve always been looking for someone to take out the
old Venture and get her back into trade!’’ Illyla reminded her
father tearfully.
“Hm-m-m, yes! But it’s in the blood, my dear! His great-
uncle Threbus went the same way! It would be far better to let
the law take its course,’’ Councilor Onswud said, glaring at
Pausert who remained sulkily silent. He had tried to explain that
the mysterious epidemic which suddenly wiped out most of the
stock of miffels wasn’t his fault. In fact, he more than suspected
the tricky hand of young Councilor Rapport who had been
wagging futilely around Illyla for the last couple of years!
“The Venture , now—!’’ Councilor Onswud mused, stroking
his long, craggy chin. “Pausert can handle a ship, at least,” he
admitted.
That was how it happened. Were they ever going to be
surprised! For even the captain realized that Councilor Onswud
was unloading all the dead fish that had gathered the dust of his
warehouses for the past fifty years on him and the Venture, in a
last, faint hope of getting some return on those half-forgotten
investments. A value of eighty-two thousand maels was placed on
the cargo; but if he’d brought even three-quarters of it back in
cash, all would have been well.
Instead—well, it started with that lucky bet on a legal point
with an Imperial Official at the Imperial capitol itself. Then
came a six-hour race fairly won against a small, fast private
yacht—the old Venture 7333 had been a pirate-chaser in die last
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
279
century and could still produce twice as much speed as her looks
suggested. From there on, the captain was socially accepted as a
sporting man and was in on a long string of jovial parties and
meets.
Jovial and profitable—the wealthier Imperials just couldn’t
resist a gamble; and the penalty he always insisted on was that
they had to buy!
He got rid of the stuff right and left! Inside of twelve weeks,
nothing remained of the original cargo except two score bundles
of expensively-built but useless tinklewood fishing poles and one
dozen gross bales of useful but unattractive all weather cloaks.
Even on a bet, nobody would take them! But the captain had a
strong hunch those items had been hopefully added to the cargo
from his own stocks by Councilor Rapport; so his failure to sell
them didn’t break his heart.
He was a neat twenty percent net ahead, at that point—
And finally came this last-minute rush-delivery of medical
supplies to Porlumma on the return route. That haul alone would
have repaid the miffle-farm losses three times over!
The captain grinned broadly into the darkness. Yes, they’d be
surprised—but just where was he now?
He checked again in the narrow street, searching for the
port-beacon in the sky. There it was—off to his left and a little
behind him. He’d got turned around somehow!
He set off carefully down an excessively dark little alley. It
was one of those towns where everybody locked their front doors
at night and retired to lit-up, inclosed courtyards at the backs of
the houses. There were voices and the rattling of dishes nearby,
and occasional whoops of laughter and singing all around him;
but it was all beyond high walls which let little or no light into
the alley.
It ended abruptly in a cross-alley and another wall. After a
moment’s debate, the captain turned to his left again. Light
spilled out on his new route a few hundred yards ahead, where a
courtyard was opened on the alley. From it, as he approached,
came the sound of doors being violently slammed, and then a
sudden, loud mingling of voices.
“Yeeee-eep!” shrilled a high, childish voice. It could have
been mortal agony, terror, or even hysterical laughter. The cap¬
tain broke into an apprehensive trot.
“Yes, I see you up there!” a man shouted excitedly in
Universum. “I caught you now—you get down from those
280
James H. Schmitz
boxes! I’ll skin you alive! Fifty-two customers sick of the
stomachache—Y O W! ’ ’
The last exclamation was accompanied by a sound as of a
small, loosely-built wooden house collapsing, and was followed
by a succession of squeals and an angry bellowing, in which the
only distinguishable words were: . .threw the boxes on
me!” Then more sounds of splintering wood.
“Hey!” yelled the captain indignantly from the comer of the
alley.
All action ceased. The narrow courtyard, brightly illuminated
under its single overhead bulb, was half covered with a tumbled
litter of what appeared to be empty wooden boxes. Standing with
his foot temporarily caught in one of them was a very large, fat
man dressed all in white and waving a stick. Momentarily cor¬
nered between the wall and two of the boxes, over one of which
she was trying to climb, was a smallish, fair-haired girl dressed
in a smock of some kind, which was also white. She might be
about fourteen, the captain thought—a helpless kid, anyway.
“What you want?” grunted the fat man, pointing the stick
with some dignity at the captain.
“Lay off the kid!” rumbled the captain, edging into the
courtyard.
“Mind your own business!” shouted the fat man, waving his
stick like a club. “I’ll take care of her! She—”
“I never did!” squealed the girl. She burst into tears.
“Try it, Fat and Ugly!” the captain warned. “I’ll ram the
stick down your throat!”
He was very close now. With a sound of grunting exasperation,
the fat man pulled his foot free of the box, wheeled suddenly and
brought the end of the stick down on the top of the captain’s cap.
The captain hit him furiously in the middle of the stomach.
There was a short flurry of activity, somewhat hampered by
shattering boxes everywhere. Then the captain stood up, scowl¬
ing and breathing hard. The fat man remained sitting on the
ground, gasping about “. . . the law!”
Somewhat to his surprise, the captain discovered the girl
standing just behind him. She caught his eye and smiled.
“My name’s Maleen,” she offered. She pointed at the fat
man. “Is he hurt bad?”
“Huh—no!” panted the captain. “But maybe we’d better—”
It was too late! A loud, self-assured voice became audible now
at the opening to the alley:
“Here, here, here, here, here!” it said in the reproachful,
situation-under-control tone that always seemed the same to the
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
281
captain, on whatever world and in whichever language he heard
it.
*‘What’s all this about?” it inquired rhetorically.
‘‘You’ll all have to come along!” it replied.
Police Court on Porlumma appeared to be a business con¬
ducted on a very efficient, around-the-clock basis. They were the
next case up.
Nikkeldepain was an odd name, wasn’t it, the judge smiled.
He then listened attentively to the various charges, countercharges,
and denials.
Bruth the Baker was charged with having struck a citizen of a
foreign government on the head with a potentially lethal
instrument—produced in evidence. Said citizen had admittedly
attempted to interfere as Bruth was attempting to punish his slave
Maleen—also produced in evidence—whom he suspected of hav¬
ing added something to a batch of cakes she was working on that
afternoon, resulting in illness and complaints from fifty-two of
Bruth’s customers.
Said foreign citizen had also used insulting language—the
captain admitted under pressure to “Fat and Ugly.”
Some provocation could be conceded for the action taken by
Bruth, but not enough. Bruth paled.
Captain Pausert, of the Republic of Nikkeldepain—everybody
but the prisoners smiled this time—was charged (a) with said
attempted interference, (b) with said insult, (c) with having
frequently and severely struck Bruth the Baker in the course of
the subsequent dispute.
The blow on the head was conceded to have provided a
provocation for charge (c)—but not enough.
Nobody seemed to be charging the slave Maleen with anything.
The judge only looked at her curiously, and shook his head.
‘‘As the Court considers this regrettable incident,” he remarked,
‘‘it looks like two years for you, Bruth; and about three for you,
captain. Too bad!”
The captain had an awful sinking feeling. He had seen some¬
thing and heard a lot of Imperial court methods in the fringe
systems. He could probably get out of this three-year rap; but it
would be expensive.
He realized that the judge was studying him reflectively.
‘‘The Court wishes to acknowledge,” the judge continued,
‘‘that the captain’s chargeable actions were due largely to a
natural feeling of human sympathy for the predicament of the
282
James H . Schmitz
slave Maleen. The Court, therefore, would suggest a settlement
as follows—subsequent to which all charges could be dropped:
“That Bruth the Baker resell Maleen of Karres—with whose
services he appears to be dissatisfied—for a reasonable sum to
Captain Pausert of the Republic of Nikkeldepain.”
Bruth the Baker heaved a gusty sigh of relief. But the captain
hesitated. The buying of human slaves by private citizens was a
very serious offense in Nikkeldepain! Still, he didn’t have to
make a record of it. If they weren’t going to soak him too
much—
At just the right moment, Maleen of Karres introduced a
barely audible, forlorn, sniffling sound.
“How much are you asking for the kid?’’ the captain inquired,
looking without friendliness at his recent antagonist. A day was
coming when he would think less severely of Bruth; but it hadn’t
come yet.
Bruth scowled back but replied with a certain eagerness: “A
hundred and fifty m—’ ’ A policeman standing behind him poked
him sharply in the side. Bruth shut up.
“Seven hundred maels,’’ the judge said smoothly. “There’ll
be Court charges, and a fee for recording the transaction—’’ He
appeared to make a swift calculation. “Fifteen hundred and
forty-two maels—’’ He turned to a clerk: “You’ve looked him
up?’’
The clerk nodded. “He’s right!’’
“And we’ll take your check,’’ the judge concluded. He gave
the captain a friendly smile. “Next case.’’
The captain felt a little bewildered.
There was something peculiar about this! He was getting out
of it much too cheaply. Since the Empire had quit its wars of
expansion, young slaves in good health were a high-priced article.
Furthermore, he was practically positive that Bruth the Baker
had been willing to sell for a tenth of what the captain actually
had to pay!
Well, he wouldn’t complain. Rapidly, he signed, sealed and
thumb-printed various papers shoved at him by a helpful clerk;
and made out a check.
“I guess,*’ he told Maleen of Karres, “we’d better get along
to the ship.’*
And now what was he going to do with the kid, he pondered,
padding along the unlighted streets with his slave trotting quietly
behind him. If he showed up with a pretty girl-slave in
Nikkeldepain, even a small one, various good friends there
THE WITCHES OF KARRES 283
would toss him into ten years or so of penal servitude—immediately
after Illy la had personally collected his scalp. They were a moral
lot.
Karres—?
“How far off is Karres, Maleen?” he asked into the dark.
“It takes about two weeks,” Maleen said tearfully.
Two weeks! The captain’s heart sank again.
“What are you blubbering about?” he inquired uncomfortably.
Maleen choked, sniffed, and began sobbing openly.
“I have two little sisters!” she cried.
“Well, well,” the captain said encouragingly. “That’s nice—
you’ll be seeing them again soon. I’m taking you home, you
know!”
Great Patham—now he’d said it! But after all—
But this piece of good news seemed to be having the wrong
effect on his slave! Her sobbing grew much more violent.
“No, I won’t,” she wailed. “They’re here!”
“Huh?” said the captain. He stopped short. “Where?”
“And the people they’re with are mean to them, too!” wept
Maleen.
The captain’s heart dropped clean through his boots. Standing
there in the dark, he helplessly watched it coming:
“You could buy them awfully cheap!” she said.
II.
In times of stress, the young life of Karres appeared to take to
the heights. It might be a mountainous place.
The Leewit sat on the top shelf of the back wall of the
crockery and antiques store, strategically flanked by two expensive-
looking vases. She was a doll-sized edition of Maleen; but her
eyes were cold and gray instead of blue and tearful. About five
or six, the captain vaguely estimated. He wasn’t very good at
estimating them around that age.
“Good evening,” he said, as he came in through the/door.
The Crockery and Antiques Shop had been easy to find. Like
Bruth the Baker’s, it was the one spot in the neighborhood that
was all lit up.
“Good evening, sir!” said what was presumably the store
owner, without looking around. He sat with his back to the
door, in a chair approximately at the center of the store and
facing the Leewit at a distance of about twenty feet.
“. . . and there you can stay without food or drink till the
284
James H. Schmitz
Holy Man comes in the morning!” he continued immediately, in
the taut voice of a man who has gone through hysteria and is
sane again. The captain realized he was addressing the Leewit
“Your other Holy Man didn’t stay very long!” the diminutive
creature piped, also ignoring the captain. Apparently, she had
not yet discovered Maleen behind him.
“This is a stronger denomination—much stronger!” the store
owner replied, in a shaking voice but with a sort of relish.
“ He'll exorcise you, all right, little demon—you’ll whistle no
buttons off him! Your time is up! Go on and whistle all you
want! Bust every vase in the place—”
The Leewit blinked her gray eyes thoughtfully at him.
“Might!” she said.
“But if you try to climb down from there,” the store owner
went on, on a rising note, “I’ll chop you into bits—into little,
little bits!”
He raised his arm as he spoke and weakly brandished what the
captain recognized with a start of horror as a highly ornamented
but probably still useful antique battle-ax.
“Ha!” said the Leewit.
“Beg your pardon, sir!” the captain said, clearing his throat.
“Good evening, sir!” the store owner repeated, without look¬
ing around. “What can I do for you?”
“I came to inquire,” the captain said hesitantly, “about that
child.”
The store owner shifted about in his chair and squinted at the
captain with red-rimmed eyes.
“Yqu’re not a Holy Man!” he said.
“Hello, Maleen!” the Leewit said suddenly. “That him?”
“We’ve come to buy you,” Maleen said. “Shut up!”
“Good!” said the Leewit.
“Buy it? Are you mocking me, sir?” the store owner inquired.
“Shut up, Moonell!” A thin, dark, determined-looking woman
had appeared in the doorway that led through the back wall of
the store. She moved out a step under the shelves; and the
Leewit leaned down from the top shelf and hissed. The woman
moved hurriedly back into the doorway.
“Maybe he means it,” she said in a more subdued voice.
“I can’t sell to a citizen of the Empire,” the store owner said
defeatedly.
“I’m not a citizen,” the captain said shortly. This time, he
wasn’t going to name it.
“No, he’s from Nikkei—” Maleen began.
“Shut up, Maleen!” the captain said helplessly in turn.
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
285
“I never heard of Nikkei,” the store owner muttered doubtfully.
“Maleen!” the woman called shrilly. “That’s the name of one
of the others—Bruth the Baker got her. He means it, all right!
He’s buying them—”
“A hundred and fifty maels!” the captain said craftily, remem¬
bering Bruth the Baker. “In cash!”
The store owner looked dazed.
“Not enough, Moonell!” the woman called. “Look at all it’s
broken! Five hundred maels!” 1
There was a sound then, so thin the captain could hardly hear
it. It pierced at his eardrums like two jabs of a delicate needle.
To right and left of him, two highly glazed little jugs went
“Clink-clink!", showed a sudden veining of cracks, and collapsed.
A brief silence settled on the store. And now that he looked
around more closely, the captain could spot here and there other
little piles of shattered crockery—and places where similar ruins
apparently had been swept up, leaving only traces of colored
dust.
The store owner laid the ax down carefully beside his chair,
stood up, swaying a little, and came towards the captain.
“You offered me a hundred and fifty maels!” he said rapidly
as he approached. “I accept it here, now, see—before witnesses!”
He grabbed the captain’s right hand in both of his and pumped it
up and down vigorously. “Sold!” he yelled.
Then he wheeled around in a leap and pointed a shaking hand
at the Leewit.
“And NOW,” he howled, “break something! Break anything!
You’re his! I’ll sue him for every mael he ever made and ever
will!”
“Oh, do come help me down, Maleen!” the Leewit pleaded
prettily.
For a change, the store of Wansing, the jeweler, was dimly lit
and very quiet. It was a sleek, fashionable place in a fashionable
shopping block near the spaceport. The front door was unlocked,
and Wansing was in.
The three of them entered quietly, and the door sighed quietly
shut behind them. Beyond a great crystal display-counter, Wansing
was moving about among a number of opened shelves, talking
softly to himself. Under the crystal of the counter, and in close-
packed rows on the satin-covered shelves, reposed a many-
colored array gleaming and glittering and shining. Wansing was no
piker.
“Good evening, sir!” the captain said across the counter.
286
James H. Schmitz
“It’s morning!” the Leewit remarked from the other side of
Maleen.
“Maleen!” said the captain.
“We’re keeping out of this,” Maleen said to the Leewit.
“All right,” said the Leewit.
Wansing had come around jerkily at the captain’s greeting, but
had made no other move. Like all the slave owners the captain
had met on Porlumma so far, Wansing seemed unhappy.
Otherwise, he was a large, dark, sleek-looking man with jewels
in his ears and a smell of expensive oils and perfumes about him.
“This place is under constant visual guard, of course!” he
told the captain gently. “Nothing could possibly happen to me
here. Why am I so frightened?”
“Not of me, I’m sure!” the captain said with an uncomfort¬
able attempt at geniality. “I’m glad your store’s still open,” he
went on briskly. “I’m here on business—”
“Oh, yes, it’s still open, of course,” Wansing said. He gave
the captain a slow smile and turned back to his shelves. “I’m
making inventory, that’s why! I’ve been making inventory since
early yesterday morning. I’ve counted them all seven times—”
“You’re very thorough,” the captain said.
“Very, very thorough!” Wansing nodded to the shelves. “The
last time I found I had made a million maels. But twice before
that, I had lost approximately the same amount. I shall have to
count them again, I suppose!” He closed a shelf softly. “I’m
sure I counted those before. But they move about constantly.
Constantly! It’s horrible.”
“You’ve got a slave here called Goth,” the captain said,
driving to the point.
“Yes, I have!” Wansing said, nodding. “And I’m sure she
understands by now I meant no harm! I do, at any rate. It was
perhaps a little—but I’m sure she understands now, or will
soon!”
“Where is she?” the captain inquired, a trifle uneasily.
“In her room perhaps,” Wansing suggested. “It’s not so bad
when she’s there in her room with the door closed. But often she
sits in the dark and looks at you as you go past—” He opened
another drawer, and closed it quietly again. “Yes, they do
move!” he whispered, as if confirming an earlier suspicion.
“Constantly—”
“Look, Wansing,” the captain said in a loud, firm voice.
“I’m not a citizen of the Empire. I want to buy this Goth! I’ll
pay you a hundred and fifty maels, cash.”
Wansing turned around completely again and looked at the
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
287
captain. “Oh, you do?” he said. “You’re not a citizen?” He
walked a few steps to the side of the counter, sat down at a small
desk and turned a light on over it. Then he put his face in his
hands for a moment.
“I’m a wealthy man,” he muttered. “An influential man! The
name of Wansing counts for a great deal on Porlumma. When
the Empire suggests you buy, you buy, of course—but it need
not have been I who bought her! I thought she would be useful in
the business—and then,"even I could not sell her again within the
Empire. She has been here for a week!”
He looked up at the captain and smiled. “One hundred and
fifty maels!” he said. “Sold! There are records to be made
out—” He reached into a drawer and took out some printed
forms. He began to write rapidly. The captain produced
identifications.
Maleen said suddenly: “Goth?”
“Right here,” a voice murmured. Wansing’s hand jerked
sharply, but he did not look up. He kept on writing.
Something small and lean and bonelessly supple, dressed in a
dark jacket and leggings, came across the thick carpets of
Wansing’s store and stood behind the captain. This one might be
about nine or ten.
“I’ll take your check, captain!” Wansing said politely. “You
must be an honest man. Besides, I want to frame it.”
“And now,’’ the captain heard himself say in the remote voice
of one who moves through a strange dream, “I suppose we
could go to the ship.”
The sky was gray and cloudy; and the streets were lightening.
Goth, he noticed, didn’t resemble her sisters. She had brown hair
cut short a few inches below her ears, and brown eyes with long,
black lashes. Her nose was short and her chin was pointed. She
made him think of some thin, carnivorous creature, like a weasel.
She looked up at him briefly, grinned, and said: “Thanks!”
“What was wrong with him?" chirped the Lee wit, walking
backwards for a last view of Wansing’s store.
“Tough crook,” muttered Goth. The Leewit giggled.
“You premoted this just dandy, Maleen!” she stated next.
“Shut up,” said Maleen.
“All right,” said the Leewit. She glanced up at the captain’s
face. “You been fighting!” she said virtuously. “Did you win?”
“Of course, the captain won!” said Maleen.
“Good for you!” said the Leewit.
288
James H Schmitz
“What about the take-off?” Goth asked the captain. She
seemed a little worried.
“Nothing to it!” the captain said stoutly, hardly bothering to
wonder how she’d guessed the take-off was the one operation on
which he and the old Venture consistently failed to co-operate.
“No,” said Goth, “I meant when?”
“Right now,” said the captain. “They’ve already cleared us.
We’ll get the sign any second.”
“Good,” said Goth. She walked off slowly down the hall
towards the back of the ship.
The take-off was pretty bad, but the Venture made it again.
Half an hour later, with Porlumma dwindling safely behind
them, the captain switched to automatic and climbed out of his
chair. After considerable experimentation, he got the electric
butler adjusted to four breakfasts, hot, with coffee. It was accom¬
plished with a great deal of advice and attempted assistance
from the Lee wit, rather less from Maleen, and no comments
from Goth.
“Everything will be coming along in a few minutes now!” he
announced. Afterwards, it struck him there had been a quality of
grisly prophecy about the statement.
“If you’d listened to me,” said the Leewit, “we’d have been
done eating a quarter of an hour ago!” She was perspiring but
triumphant—she had been right all along.
“Say, Maleen,” she said suddenly, “you promoting again?”
Promoting? The captain looked at Maleen. She seemed pale
and troubled.
“Spacesick?” he suggested. “I’ve got some pills—”
“No, she’s promoting,” the Leewit said scowling. “What’s
up, Maleen?”
“Shut up,” said Goth.
“All right,” said the Leewit. She was silent a moment, and
then began to wriggle. “Maybe we’d better—”
“Shut up,” said Maleen.
“It’s all ready,” said Goth.
“What’s all ready?” asked the captain.
“All right,” said the Leewit. She looked at the captain.
“Nothing,” she said.
He looked at them then, and they looked at him—one set each
of gray eyes, and brown, and blue. They were all sitting around
the control room floor in a circle, the fifth side of which was
occupied by the electric butler.
What peculiar little waifs, the captain thought. He hadn’t
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
289
perhaps really realized until now just how very peculiar. They
were still staring at him.
“Well, well!” he said heartily. “So Maleen ‘premotes’ and
gives people stomach-aches.”
Maleen smiled dimly and smoothed back her yellow hair.
“They just thought they were getting them,” she murmuied.
“Mass history,” explained the Leewit, offhandedly.
“Hysteria,” said Goth. “The Imperials get their hair up about
us every so often.”
“I noticed that,” the captain nodded. “And little Leewit
here—she whistles and busts things.”
“It’s the Leewit,” the Leewit said, frowning.
“Oh, I see,” said the captain. “Like the captain, eh?”
“That’s right,” said the Leewit. She smiled.
“And what does little Goth do?” the captain addressed the
third witch.
Little Goth appeared pained. Maleen answered for her.
“Goth teleports mostly,” she said.
“Oh, she does?” said the captain. “I’ve heard about that
trick, too,” he added lamely.
“Just small stuff really!” Goth said abruptly. She reached into
the top of her jacket and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle the
size of the captain’s two fists. The four ends of the cloth were
knotted together. Goth undid the knot. “Like this,” she said and
poured out the contents on the rug between them. There was a
sound like a big bagful of marbles being spilled.
“Great Patham!” the captain swore, staring down at what was
a cool quarter-million in jewel stones, or he was still a
miffel-farmer.
“Good gosh,” said the Leewit, bouncing to her feet. “Maleen,
we better get at it right away!”
The two blondes darted from the room. The captain hardly
noticed their going. He was staring at Goth.
“Child,” he said, “don’t you realize they hang you without
trial on places like Porlumma, if you’re caught with stolen
goods?”
“We’re not on Porlumma,” said Goth. She looked slightly
annoyed. “They’re for you. You spent money on us, didn’t
you?”
“Not that kind of money,” said the captain. “If Wansing
noticed— They’re Wansing’s, I suppose?”
“Sure!” said Goth. “Pulled them in just before take-off!”
“If he reported, there’ll be police ships on our tail any—”
“Goth!” Maleen shrilled.
290
James H. Schmitz
Goth’s head came around and she rolled up on her feet in one
motion. “Coming,” she shouted. “Excuse me,” she murmured
to the captain. Then she, too, was out of the room.
But again, the captain scarcely noticed her departure. He had
rushed to the control desk with a sudden awful certainty and
/itched on all screens.
There they were! Two sleek, black ships coming up fast from
hind, and already almost in gun-range! They weren’t regular
police boats, the captain recognized, but auxiliary craft of the
Empire’s frontier fleets. He rammed the Venture's drives full on.
Immediately, red-and-black fire blossoms began to sprout in
space behind him—then a finger of flame stabbed briefly past,
not a hundred yards to the right of the ship.
But the communicator stayed dead. Porlumma preferred risk¬
ing the sacrifice of Wansing’s jewels to giving them a chance to
surrender! To do the captain justice, his horror was due much
more to the fate awaiting his three misguided charges than to the
fact that he was going to share it.
He was putting the Venture through a wildly erratic and, he
hoped, aim-destroying series of sideways hops and forward lunges
with one hand, and trying to unlimber the turrets of the nova
guns with the other, when suddenly—!
No, he decided at once, there was no use trying to understand
it— There were just no more Empire ships around. The screens all
blurred and darkened simultaneously; and, for a short while, a dark¬
ness went flowing and coiling lazily past the Venture. Light jumped
out of it at him once, in a cold, ugly glare, and receded again in
a twisting, unnatural fashion. The Venture's drives seemed dead.
Then, just as suddenly, the old ship jerked, shivered, roared
aggrievedly, and was hurling herself along on her own power
again!
But Porlumma’s sun was no longer in evidence. Stars gleamed
and shifted distantly against the blackness of deep space all
about. The patterns seemed familiar, but he wasn’t a good
enough navigator to be sure.
The captain stood up stiffly, feeling a heavy cloud. And at that
moment, with a wild, hilarious clacking like a metallic hen, the
electric butler delivered four breakfasts, hot, one after the other,
right onto the center of the control room floor.
The first voice said distinctly: “Shall we just leave it on?”
A second voice, considerably more muffled, replied: “Yes,
let’s! You never know when you need it—”
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
291
The third voice, tucked somewhere in between them, said
simply: “Whew!"
Peering about the dark room in bewilderment, the captain
realized suddenly that the voices had come from the speaker of
an intership communicator, leading to what had once been the
Venture 's captain’s cabin.
He listened; but only a dim murmuring came from it now, and
then nothing at all. He started towards the hall, then returned and
softly switched off the communicator. He went quietly down the
hall until he came to the captain’s cabin. Its door was closed.
He listened a moment, and opened it suddenly.
There was a trio of squeals:
“Oh, don’t! You spoiled it!”
The captain stood motionless. Just one glimpse had been given
him of what seemed to be a bundle of twisted black wires
arranged loosely like the frame of a truncated cone on—or was it
just above?—a table in the center of the cabin. Where the tip of
the cone should have been burned a round, swirling, orange fire.
About it, their faces reflecting its glow, stood the three witches.
Then the fire vanished; the wires collapsed. There was only
ordinary light in the room. They were looking up at him
variously—Maleen with smiling regret, the Leewit in frank
annoyance, Goth with no expression at all.
“What out of Great Patham’s Seventh Hell was that?” in¬
quired the captain, his hair bristling slowly.
The Leewit looked at Goth; Goth looked at Maleen. Maleen
said doubtfully: “We can just tell you its name—”
“That was the Sheewash Drive,” said Goth.
“The what-drive?” asked the captain.
“Sheewash,” repeated Maleen.
“The one you have to do it with yourself,” the Leewit said
helpfully.
“Shut up,” said Maleen.
There was a long pause. The captain looked down at the handful
of thin, black, twelve-inch wires scattered about the table top.
He touched one of them. It was dead-cold.
“I see,” he said. “I guess we’re all going to have a long
talk.” Another pause. “Where are we now?”
“About three light-years down the way you were going,” said
Goth. “We only worked it thirty seconds.”
“Twenty-eight!” corrected Maleen, with the authority of her
years. “The Leewit was getting tired.”
“I see,” said Captain Pausert carefully. “Well, let’s go have
some breakfast.”
292
James H. Schmitz
III.
They ate with a silent voraciousness, dainty Maleen, the exqui¬
site Leewit, supple Goth, all alike. The captain, long finished,
watched them with amazement and—now at last—with some¬
thing like awe.
“It’s the Sheewash Drive,’’ explained Maleen finally, catch¬
ing his expression.
“Takes it out of you!’’ said Goth.
The Leewit grunted affirmatively and stuffed on.
“Can’t do too much of it,’’ said Maleen. “Or too often. It
kills you sure!’’
“What,’’ said the captain, “/$ the Sheewash Drive?’’
They became reticent. People did it on Karres, said Maleen,
when they had to go somewhere else fast. Everybody knew how
there.
“But of course,’’ she added, “we’re pretty young to do it
right!’’
“We did it pretty good!’’ the Leewit contradicted positively.
She seemed to be finished at last.
“But how?’’ said the captain.
Reticence thickened almost visibly. If you couldn’t do it, said
Maleen, you couldn’t understand it either.
He gave it up, for the time being.
“I guess I’ll have to take you home next,’’ he said; and they
agreed.
Karres, it developed, was in the Iverdahl System. He couldn’t
find any planet of that designation listed in his maps of the area,
but that meant nothing. The maps were old and often inaccurate,
and local names changed a lot.
Barring the use of weird and deadly miracle-drives, that detour
was going to cost him almost a month in time—and a good
chunk of his profits in power used up. The jewels Goth had
illegally teleported must, of course, be returned to their owner,
he explained. He’d intended to look severely at the culprit at that
point; but she’d meant well, after all! They were extremely
peculiar children, but still children—they couldn’t really under¬
stand.
He would stop off en route to Karres at an Empire planet with
banking facilities to take care of that matter, the captain added.
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
293
A planet far enough off so the police wouldn’t be likely to take
any particular interest in the Venture .
A dead silence greeted this schedule. It appeared that the
representatives of Karres did not think much of his logic.
“Well,” Maleen sighed at last, “we’ll see you get your
money back some other way then!”
The junior witches nodded coldly.
“How did you three happen to get into this fix?” the captain
inquired, with the intention of changing the subject.
They’d left Karres together on a jaunt of their own, they
explained. No, they hadn’t run away—he got the impression that
such trips were standard procedure for juveniles in that place.
They were on another planet, a civilized one but beyond the
borders and law of Empire, when the town they were in was
raided by a small fleet of slavers. They were taken along with
most of the local youngsters.
“It’s a wonder,” he said reflectively, “you didn’t take over
the ship.”
“Oh, brother!” exclaimed the Leewit.
“Not that ship!” said Goth.
“That was an Imperial Slaver!” Maleen informed him. “You
behave yourself every second on those crates.”
Just the same, the captain thought as he settled himself to rest
in the control room on a couch he had set up there, it was no
longer surprising that the Empire wanted no young slaves from
Karres to be transported into the interior! Oddest sort of children—
But he ought to be able to get his expenses paid by their
relatives. Something very profitable might even be made of this
deal—
Have to watch the record-entries though! Nikkeldepain’s laws
were explicit about the penalties invoked by anything resembling
the purchase and sale of slaves.
He’d thoughtfully left the intership communicator adjusted so
he could listen in on their conversation in the captain’s cabin.
However, there had been nothing for some time beyond frequent
bursts of childish giggling. Then came a succession of piercing
shrieks from the Leewit. It appeared she was being forcibly
washed behind the ears by Maleen and obliged to brush her
teeth, in preparation for bedtime.
It had been agreed that he was not to enter the cabin, because—
for reasons not given—they couldn’t keep the Sheewash Drive
on in his presence; and they wanted to have it ready, in case of
an emergency. Piracy was rife beyond the Imperial borders,
294
James H. Schmitz
and the Venture would keep beyond the border for a good part of
the trip, to avoid the more pressing danger of police pursuit
instigated by Porlumma. The captain had explained the potentiali¬
ties of the nova guns the Venture boasted, or tried to. Possibly,
they hadn’t understood. At any rate, they seemed unimpressed.
The Sheewash Drive! Boy, he thought in sudden excitement,
if he could just get the principles of that. Maybe he would!
He raised his head suddenly. The Leewit’s voice had lifted
clearly over the communicator:
. . .not such a bad old dope!” the childish treble remarked.
The captain blinked indignantly.
“He’s not so old,” Maleen’s soft voice returned. “And he’s
certainly no dope!”
He smiled. Good kid, Maleen.
“Yeah, yeah!” squeaked the Leewit offensively. “Maleen’s
sweet onthu-ulp!”
A vague commotion continued for a while, indicating, he
hoped, that someone he could mention was being smothered
under a pillow.
He drifted off to sleep before it was settled.
If you didn’t happen to be thinking of what they’d done, they
seemed more or less like normal children. Right from the start,
they displayed a flattering interest in the captain and his
background; and he told them all about everything and every¬
body in Nikkeldepain. Finally, he even showed them his trea¬
sured pocket-sized picture of Illyla—the one with which he’d held
many cozy conversations during the earlier part of his trip.
Almost at once, though, he realized that was a mistake. They
studied it intently in silence, their heads crowded close together.
“Oh, brother!” the Leewit whispered then, with entirely the
wrong kind of inflection.
“Just what did you mean by that?” the captain inquired
coldly.
“Sweet!” murmured Goth. But it was the way she closed her
eyes briefly, as though gripped by a light spasm of nausea.
“Shut up, Goth!” Maleen said sharply. “I think she’s very
swee ... I mean, she looks very nice!” she told the captain.
The captain was disgruntled. Silendy, he retrieved the ma¬
ligned Illyla and returned her to his breast pocket. Silendy, he
went off and left them standing there.
But afterwards, in private, he took it out again and studied it
worriedly. His Illyla! He shifted the picture back and forth under
the light. It wasn’t really a very good picture of her, he decided.
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
295
It had been bungled! From certain angles, one might even say
that Illy la did look the least bit insipid.
What was he thinking, he thought, shocked.
He unlimbered the nova gun turrets next and got in a little
firing practice. They had been sealed when he took over the
Venture and weren’t supposed to be used, except in absolute
emergencies. They were somewhat uncertain weapons, though
very effective, and Nikkeldepain had turned to safer forms of
armament many decades ago. But on the third day out from
Nikkeldepain, the captain made a brief notation in his log:
“Attacked by two pirate craft. Unsealed nova guns. Destroyed
one attacker; survivor fled—’ ’
He was rather pleased by that crisp, hard-bitten description of
desperate space-adventure, and enjoyed rereading it occasionally.
It wasn’t true, though. He had put in an interesting four hours at
the time pursuing and annihilating large, craggy chunks of sub¬
stance of a meteorite-cloud he found the Venture plowing through.
Those nova guns were fascinating stuff! You’d sight the turrets
on something; and so long as it didn’t move after that, it was all
right. If it did move, it got it—unless you relented and deflected
the turrets first. They were just the thing for arresting a pirate in
midspace.
The Venture dipped back into the Empire’s borders four days
later and headed for the capitol of the local province. Police
ships challenged them twice on the way in; and the captain found
considerable comfort in the awareness that his passengers
foregathered silently in their cabin on these occasions. They
didn’t tell him they were set to use the Sheewash Drive—somehow
it had never been mentioned since that first day; but he knew the
queer orange fire was circling over its skimpy framework of
twisted wires there and ready to act.
However, the space police waved him on, satisfied with rou¬
tine identification. Apparently, the Venture had not become gen¬
erally known as a criminal ship, to date.
Maleen accompanied him to the banking institution that was to
return Wansing’s property to Porlumma. Her sisters, at the captain’s
definite request, remained on the ship.
The transaction itself went off without a visible hitch. The
jewels would reach their destination in Porlumma within a month.
But he had to take out a staggering sum in insurance—“Piracy,
thieves!’’ smiled the clerk. “Even summary capital punishment
won’t keep the rats down.’’ And, of course, he had to register
296
James H. Schmitz
name, ship, home planet, and so on. But since they already had
all that information in Porlumma, he gave it without hesitation.
On the way back to the spaceport, he sent off a sealed
message by radio-relay to the bereaved jeweler, informing him
of the action taken, and regretting the misunderstanding.
He felt a little better after that, though the insurance payment
had been a severe blow! If he didn’t manage to work out a
decent profit on Karres somehow, the losses on the miffel farm
would hardly be covered now.
Then he noticed that Maleen was getting uneasy.
“We’d better hurry!’’ was all she would say, however. Her
face grew pale.
The captain understood. She was having another premonition!
The hitch to this promoting business was, apparently, that when
something was brewing you were informed of the bare fact but
had to guess at most of the details. They grabbed an aircab and
raced back to the spaceport.
They had just been cleared there when he spotted a small
group of uniformed men coming along the dock on the double.
They stopped short and then scattered, as the Venture lurched
drunkenly sideways into the air. Everyone else in sight was
scattering, too.
That was a very bad take-off—one of the captain’s worst!
Once afloat, however, he ran the ship promptly into the nightside
of the planet and turned her nose towards the border. The old
pirate-chaser had plenty of speed when you gave her the reins;
and throughout the entire next sleep-period, he let her use it all.
The Sheewash Drive was not required that time.
Next day, he had a lengthy private talk with Goth on the
Golden Rule and the Law, with particular reference to individual
property rights. If Councilor Onswud had been monitoring the
sentiments expressed by the captain, he could not have failed to
rumble surprised approval. The delinquent herself listened
impassively; but the captain fancied she showed distinct signs of
being rather impressed by his earnestness.
It was two days after that—well beyond the borders again—
when they were obliged to make an unscheduled stop at a mining
moon. For the captain discovered he had already miscalculated
the extent to which the prolonged run on overdrive after leaving
the capitol was going to deplete the Venture 's reserves. They
would have to juice up—
A large, extremely handsome Sirian freighter lay beside them
at the Moon station. It was half a battlecraft really, since it dealt
regularly beyond the borders. They had to wait while it was
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
297
being serviced; and it took a long time. The Sirians turned out to
be as unpleasant as their ship was good-looking—a snooty,
conceited, hairy lot who talked only their own dialect and pre¬
tended to be unfamiliar with Imperial Universum.
The captain found himself getting irked by their bad manners—
particularly when he discovered they were laughing over his
argument with the service superintendent about the cost of iepow-
ering the Venture.
“You’re out in deep space, captain!’’ said the superintendent.
“And you haven’t juice enough left even to travel back to the
Border. You can’t expect Imperial prices here!’’
“It’s not what you charged them\" The captain angrily jerked
his thumb at the Sirian.
“Regular customers!*’ the superintendent shrugged. “You start
coming by here every three months like they do, and we can
make an arrangement with you, too.’’
It was outrageous—it actually put the Venture back in the red!
But there was no help for it.
Nor did it improve the captain’s temper when he muffed the
take-off once more—and then had to watch the Sirian floating
into space, as sedately as a swan, a little behind him!
An hour later, as he sat glumly before the controls, debating
the chance of recouping his losses before returning to Nikkeldepain,
Maleen and the Leewit hurriedly entered the room. They did
something to a port screen.
“They sure are!’’ the Leewit exclaimed. She seemed child¬
ishly pleased.
“Are what?’’ the captain inquired absently.
“Following us,’’ said Maleen. She did not sound pleased.
“It’s that Sirian ship. Captain Pausert—’*
The captain stared bewilderedly at the screen. There was a
ship in focus there. It was quite obviously the Sirian and, just as
obviously, it was following them.
“What do they want?’’ he wondered. “They’re stinkers but
they’re not pirates. Even if they were, they wouldn’t spend an
hour running after a crate like the VentureV'
Maleen said nothing. The Leewit observed: “Oh, brother! Got
their bow-turrets out now—better get those nova guns ready!’’
“But it’s all nonsense!’’ the captain said, flushing angrily. He
turned suddenly towards the communicators. “What’s that Em¬
pire general beam-length?’’
“.0044,’’ said Maleen.
A roaring, abusive voice flooded the control room immediately.
298
James H. Schmitz
The one word understandable to the captain was “Venture." It
was repeated frequently, sometimes as if it were a question.
“Sirian!” said the captain. “Can you understand them?” he
asked Maleen.
She shook her head. “The Leewit can—”
The Leewit nodded, her gray eyes glistening.
“What are they saying?”
“They says you’re for stopping,” the Leewit translated rapidly,
but apparently retaining much of the original sentence-structure.
“They says you’re for skinning alive ... ha! They says you’re
for stopping right now and for only hanging. They says—”
Maleen scuttled from the control room. The Leewit banged the
communicator with one small fist.
“Beak-Wock!” she shrieked. It sounded like that, anyway.
The loud voice paused a moment.
“Beak-Wock?” it returned in an aggrieved, demanding roar.
“Beak-Wock!” the Leewit affirmed with apparent delight.
She rattled off a string of similar-sounding syllables. She paused.
A howl of inarticulate wrath responded.
The captain, in a whirl of outraged emotions, was yelling at
the Leewit to shut up, at the Sirian to go to Great Patham’s
Second Hell—the worst—and wrestling with the nova gun adjus¬
tors at the same time. He’d had about enough! He’d—
SSS-whoosh!
It was the Sheewash Drive.
“And where are we now?” the captain inquired, in a voice of
unnatural calm.
“Same place, just about,” said the Leewit. “Ship’s still on
the screen. Way back though—take them an hour again to catch
up.” She seemed disappointed; then brightened. “You got lots
of time to get the guns ready!”
The captain didn’t answer. He was marching down the hall
towards the rear of the Venture. He passed the captain’s cabin
and noted the door was shut. He went on without pausing. He
was mad clean through—he knew what had happened!
After all he’d told her, Goth had teleported again.
It was all there, in the storage. Items of half a pound in weigm
seemed to be as much as she could handle. But amazing quanti¬
ties of stuff had met that one requirement—bottles filled with
what might be perfume or liquor or dope, expensive-looking
garments and cloths in a shining variety of colors, small boxes,
odds, ends and, of course, jewelry!
He spent half an hour getting it loaded into a steel space crate.
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
299
He wheeled the crate into the rear lock, sealed the inside lock
and pulled the switch that activated the automatic launching
device.
The outside lock clicked shut. He stalked back to the control
room. The Leewit was still in charge, fiddling with the
communicators.
“I could try a whistle over them,” she suggested, glancing
up. She added: “But they’d bust somewheres, sure.”
“Get them on again!” the captain said.
“Yes, sir,” said the Leewit surprised.
The roaring voice came back faintly.
“SHUT UP!” the captain shouted in Imperial Universum.
The voice shut up.
“Tell them they can pick up their stuff—it’s been dumped out
in a crate!” the captain told the Leewit. “Tell them I’m proceed¬
ing on my course. Tell them if they follow me one light-minute
beyond that crate, I’ll come back for them, shoot their front end
off, shoot their rear end off, and ram ’em in the middle.”
“Yes, SIR!” the Leewit sparkled. They proceeded on their
course.
Nobody followed.
“Now I want to speak to Goth,” the captain announced. He was
still at a high boil. “Privately,” he added. “Back in the storage—”
Goth followed him expressionlessly into the storage. He closed
the door to the hall. He’d broken off a two-foot length from the
tip of one of Councilor Rapport’s overpriced tinkle wood fishing
poles. It made a fair switch.
But Goth looked terribly small just now! He cleared his throat.
He wished for a moment he were back on Nikkeldepain.
“I warned you,” he said.
Goth didn’t move. Between one second and the next, however,
she seemed to grow remarkably. Her brown eyes focused on the
captain’s Adam’s apple; her lip lifted at one side. A slightly
hungry look came into her face.
“Wouldn’t try that!’* she murmured.
Mad again, the captain reached out quickly and got a handful
of leathery cloth. There was a blur of motion, and what felt like
a small explosion against his left kneecap. He grunted with
anguished surprise and fell back on a bale of Councilor Rapport’s
all-weather cloaks. But he had retained his grip—Goth fell half
on top of him, and that was still a favorable position. Then her
head snaked around, her neck seemed to extend itself; and her
teeth snapped his wrist.
Weasels don’t let go—
300
James H. Schmitz
* * *
“Didn’t think he’d have the nerve!’’ Goth’s voice came over
the communicator. There was a note of grudging admiration in
it. It seemed that she was inspecting her bruises.
All tangled up in the job of bandaging his freely bleeding
wrist, the captain hoped she’d find a good plenty to count. His
knee felt the size of a sofa pillow and throbbed like a piston
engine.
“The captain is a brave man,” Maleen was saying reproachfully.
“You should have known better—”
“He’s not very smart , though!” the Leewit remarked sugges¬
tively.
There was a short silence.
“Is he? Goth? Eh?” the Leewit urged.
“Perhaps not very,” said Goth.
“You two lay off him!” Maleen ordered. “Useless,” she
added meaningly, “you want to swim back to Karres—on the
Egger Route!”
“Not me,” the Leewit said briefly.
“You could still do it, I guess,” said Goth. She seemed to be
reflecting. “All right—we’ll lay off him. It was a fair fight,
anyway.”
IV.
They raised Karres the sixteenth day after leaving Porlumma.
There had been no more incidents; but then, neither had there
been any more stops^ or other contacts with the defenseless
Empire. Maleen had cooked up a poultice which did wonders for
his knee. With the end of the trip in sight, all tensions had
relaxed; and Maleen, at least, seemed to grow hourly more
regretful at the prospect of parting.
After a brief study, Karres could be distinguished easily enough
by the fact that it moved counterclockwise to all the other planets
of the Iverdahl System.
Well, it would, the captain thought.
They came soaring into its atmosphere on the dayside without
arousing any visible interest. No communicator signals reached
them; and no other ships showed up to look them over. Karres,
in fact, had all the appearance of a completely uninhabited
world. There were a larger number of seas, too big to be called
lakes and too small to be oceans, scattered over its surface. There
was one enormously towering ridge of mountains that ran from
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
301
pole to pole, and any number of lesser chains. There were two
good-sized ice caps; and the southern section of the planet was
speckled with intermittent stretches of snow. Almost all of it
seemed to be dense forest.
It was a handsome place, in a wild, somber way.
They went gliding over it, from noon through morning and
into the dawn fringe—the captain at the controls, Goth and the
Leewit flanking him at the screens, and Maleen behind him to do
the directing. After a few initial squeals, the Leewit became
oddly silent. Suddenly the captain realized she was blubbering.
Somehow, it startled him to discover that her homecoming had
affected the Leewit to that extent. He felt Goth reach out behind
him and put her hand on the Leewit’s shoulder. The smallest
witch sniffled happily.
“ ’S beautiful!” she growled.
He felt a resurge of the wondering, protective friendliness they
had aroused in him at first. They must have been having a rough
time of it, at that. He sighed; it seemed a pity they hadn’t got
along a little better!
“Where’s everyone hiding?” he inquired, to break up the
mood. So far, there hadn’t been a sign of human habitation.
“There aren’t many people on Karres,” Maleen said from
behind his shoulder. “But we’re going to The Town—you’ll
meet about half of them there!”
“What’s that place down there?” the captain asked with
sudden interest. Something like an enormous lime-white bowl
seemed to have been set flush into the floor of the wide valley up
which they were moving.
“That’s the Theater where . . . ouchV ’ the Leewit said. She
fell silent then but turned to give Maleen a resentful look.
“Something strangers shouldn’t be told about, eh?” the cap¬
tain said tolerantly. Goth glanced at him from the side.
“We’ve got rules,” she said.
He let the ship down a little as they passed over “the Theater
where—’ ’ It was a sort of large, circular arena, with numerous
steep tiers of seats running up around it. But all was bare and
deserted now.
On Maleen’s direction, they took the next valley fork to the
right and dropped lower still. He had his first look at Karres
animal life then. A flock of large, creamy-white birds, remarka¬
bly Terrestrial in appearance, flapped by just below them, appar¬
ently unconcerned about the ship. The forest underneath had
opened out into a long stretch of lush meadow land, with small
creeks winding down into its center. Here a herd of several
302
James H. Schmitz
hundred head of beasts was grazing—beasts of mastodonic size
and build, with hairless, shiny black hides. The mouths of then-
long, heavy heads were twisted up into sardonic, crocodilian
grins as they blinked up at the passing Venture.
“Black Bollems,” said Goth, apparently enjoying the captain’s
expression. “Lots of them around; they’re tame. But the gray
mountain ones are good hunting.’’
“Good eating, too!’’ the Leewit said. She licked her lips
daintily. “Breakfast—!’’^she sighed, her thoughts diverted to a
familiar track. “And we ought to be just in time!’’
“There’s the field!’’ Maleen cried, pointing. “Set her down
there, captain!’’
The “field” was simply a flat meadow of close-trimmed grass
running smack against the mountainside to their left. One small
vehicle, bright blue in color, was parked on it; and it was
bordered on two sides by very tall, blue-black trees.
That was all.
The captain shook his head. Then he set her down.
The town of Karres was a surprise to him in a good many
ways. For one thing, there was much more of it than you would
have thought possible after flying over the area. It stretched for
miles through the forest, up the flanks of the mountain and
across the valley—little clusters of houses or individual ones,
each group screened from all the rest and from the sky overhead
by the trees.
They liked color on Karres; but then they hid it away! The
houses were bright as flowers, red and white, apple-green, golden-
brown—all spick and span, scrubbed and polished and aired with
that brisk, green forest-smell. At various times of the day, there
was also the smell of remarkably good things to eat. There were
brooks and pools and a great number of shaded vegetable gar¬
dens to the town. There were risky-looking treetop playgrounds,
and treetop platforms and galleries which seemed to have no
particular purpose. On the ground was mainly an enormously
confusing maze of paths—narrow trails of sandy soil snaking
about among great brown tree roots and chunks of gray mountain
rock, and half covered with fallen needle leaves. The first six
times the captain set out unaccompanied, he’d lost his way
hopelessly within minutes, and had to be guided back out of the
forest.
But the most hidden of all were the people! About four
thousand of them were supposed to live in the town, with as
many more scattered about die planet. But you never got to see
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
303
more than three or four at any one time—except when now and
then a pack of children, who seemed to the captain to be
uniformly of the Leewit’s size, would burst suddenly out of the
undergrowth across a path before you, and vanish again.
As for the others, you did hear someone singing occasionally;
or there might be a whole muted concert going on all about, on a
large variety of wooden musical instruments which they seemed
to enjoy tootling with, gently.
But it wasn’t a real town at all, the captain thought. They
didn’t live like people, these Witches of Karres—it was more
like a flock of strange forest birds that happened to be nesting in
the same general area. Another thing: they appeared to be busy
enough—but what was their business?
He discovered he was reluctant to ask Toll too many questions
about it. Toll was the mother of his three witches; but only Goth
really resembled her. It was difficult to picture Goth becoming
smoothly matured and pleasantly rounded; but that was Toll. She
had the same murmuring voice, the same air of sideways observa¬
tion and secret reflection. And she answered all the captain’s
questions with apparent frankness; but he never seemed to get
much real information out of what she said.
It was odd, too! Because he was spending several hours a day
in her company, or in one of the next rooms at any rate, while
she went about her housework. Toll’s daughters had taken him
home when they landed; and he was installed in the room that
belonged to their father—busy just now, the captain gathered,
with some sort of research of a geological nature elsewhere on
Karres. The arrangement worried him a little at first, particularly
since Toll and he were mostly alone in the house. Maleen was
going to some kind of school; she left early in the morning and
came back late in the afternoon; and Goth and the Leewit were
just plain running wild! They usually got in long after the captain
had gone to bed and were off again before he turned out for
breakfast.
It hardly seemed like the right way to raise them! One afternoon,
he found the Leewit curled up and asleep in the chair he usually
occupied on the porch before the house. She slept there for four
solid hours, while the captain sat nearby and leafed gradually
through a thick book with illuminated pictures called “Histories
of Ancient Yarthe.’’ Now and then, he sipped at a cool, green,
faintly intoxicating drink Toll had placed quietly beside him
some while before, or sucked an aromatic smoke from the
enormous pipe with a floor rest, which he understood was a
favorite of Toll’s husband.
304
James H. Schmitz
* * *
Then the Lee wit woke up suddenly, uncoiled, gave him a look
between a scowl and a friendly grin, slipped off the porch and
vanished among the trees.
He couldn’t quite figure that look! It might have meant noth¬
ing at all in particular, but—
The captain laid down his book then and worried a little more.
It was true, of course, that nobody seemed in the least concerned
about his presence. All of Karres appeared to know about him,
and he’d met quite a number of people by now in a casual way.
But nobody came around to interview him or so much as dropped
in for a visit. However, Toll’s husband presumably would be
returning presently, and—
How long had he been here, anyway?
Great Patham, the captain thought, shocked. He’d lost count
of the days!
Or was it weeks?
He went in to find Toll.
“It’s been a wonderful visit,’’ he said, “but I’ll have to be
leaving, I guess. Tomorrow morning, early—’’
Toll put some fancy sewing she was working on back in a
glass basket, laid her thin, strong witch’s hands in her lap, and
smiled up at him.
“We thought you’d be thinking that,’’ she said, “and so we—
You know, captain, it was quite difficult to find a way to reward
you for bringing back the children?’’
“It was?” said the captain, suddenly realizing he’d also clean
forgotten he was broke! And now the wrath of Onswud lay close
ahead.
“Gold and jewel stones would have been just right, of course!’’
she said, “but unfortunately, while there’s no doubt a lot of it on
Karres somewhere, we never got around to looking for it. And
we haven’t money—none that you could use, that is!’’
“No, I don’t suppose you do,’’ the captain agreed sadly.
“However,’’ said Toll, “we’ve all been talking about it in the
town, and so we’ve loaded a lot of things aboard your ship that
we think you can sell at a fine profit!’’
“Well now,’’ the captain said gratefully, “that’s fine of—’’
“There are furs,’’ said Toll, “the very finest furs we could fix
up—two thousand of them!’’
“Oh!’’ said the captain, bravely keeping his smile. “Well,
that’s wonderful!’’
“And essences of perfume!’’ said Toll. “Everyone brought
THE WITCHES OF KARRES 305
one bottle of their own, so that’s eight thousand three hundred and
twenty-three bottles of perfume essences—all different!”
“Perfume!” said the captain. “Fine, fine—but you really
shouldn’t—”
“And the rest of it,” Toll concluded happily, “is the green
Lepti liquor you like so much, and the Wintenberry jellies!” She
frowned. “I forgot just how many jugs and jars,” she admitted,
“but there were a lot. It’s all loaded now. And do you think
you’ll be able to sell all that?” she smiled.
“I certainly can!” the captain said stoutly. “It’s wonderful
stuff, and there’s nothing like it in the Empire.”
Which was very true. They wouldn’t have considered miffel-
furs for lining on Karres. But if he’d been alone he would have
felt like he wanted to burst into tears.
The witches couldn’t have picked more completely unsalable
items if they’d tried! Furs, cosmetics, food and liquor—he’d be
shot on sight if he got caught trying to run that kind of merchan¬
dise into the Empire. For the same reason that they couldn’t use
it on Nikkeldepain—they were that scared of contamination by
goods that came from uncleared worlds!
He breakfasted alone next morning. Toll had left a note beside
his plate, which explained in a large, not too legible script that
she had to run off and fetch the Leewit; and that if he was gone
before she got back she was wishing him good-by and good
luck.
He smeared two more buns with Wintenberry jelly, drank a
large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the
omelet of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant
repletion, toyed around with his slice of roasted Bollem liver.
Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he
landed on Karres.
He wondered how Toll kept that sleek figure.
Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed
her note for a souvenir, and went out on the porch. There a
tear-stained Maleen hurled herself into his arms.
“Oh, captain!” she sobbed. “You’re leaving—”
“Now, now!” the captain murmured, touched and surprised
by the lovely child’s grief. He patted her shoulders soothingly.
“I’ll be back,” he said rashly.
“Oh, yes, do come back!” cried Maleen. She hesitated and
added: “I become marriageable two years from now. Karres
time—”
“Well, well,” said the captain, dazed. “Well, now—”
306
James H. Schmitz
He set off dawn the path a few minutes later, with a strange
melody tinkling in his head. Around the first curve, it changed
abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a
spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve,
he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-
morning sunlight and what looked like a slow-motion fountain of
gleaming rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of
large, vari-hued soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a
wooden tub full of hot water, soap and the Leewit. Toll was bent
over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath, with
only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs
pumped full of a fresh supply of air.
As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red,
wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.
“Well, Ugly,” she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage,
“who you staring at?” Then a sudden determination came into
her eyes. She pursed her lips.
Toll up-ended her promptly and smacked the Leewit’s bottom.
“She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you,” she
explained hurriedly. “Perhaps you’d better get out of range
while I can keep her head under. And good luck, captain!”
Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of
course, it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there
among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze
sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from
still higher up—it could have been swan hawks reproaching him
for the omelet.
Somewhere in the distance, somebody tootled on a wood-
instrument, very gently.
He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field, when
something buzzed past him like an enormous wasp and went
CLUNK\ into the bole of a tree just before him.
It was a long, thin, wicked-looking arrow. On its shaft was a
white card; and on the card was printed in red letters:
STOP, MAN OF NIKKELDEPAIN!
The captain stopped and looked around slowly and cautiously.
There was no one in sight. What did it mean?
He had a sudden feeling as if all of Karres were rising up
silently in one stupendous, cool, foggy trap about him. His skin
began to crawl. What was going to happen?
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
307
“Ha-ha!” said Goth, suddenly visible on a rock twelve feet to
his left and eight feet above him. “You did stop!”
The captain let his breath out slowly.
“What else did you think I’d do?” he inquired. He felt a little
faint.
She slid down from the rock like a lizard and stood before
him. “Wanted to say good-by!” she told him.
Thin and brown, in jacket, breeches, boots, and cap of gray-
green rock-lichen color, Goth looked very much in her element.
The brown eyes looked up at him steadily; the mouth smiled
faintly; but there was no real expression on her face at all. There
was a quiverful of those enormous arrows slung over her shoulder,
and some arrow-shooting gadget—not a bow—in her left hand.
She followed his glance.
“Bollem hunting up the mountain,” she explained. “The wild
ones. They’re better meat—”
The captain reflected a moment. That’s right, he recalled; they
kept the tame Bollem herds mostly for milk, butter, and cheese.
He’d learned a lot of important things about Karres, all right!
“Well,” he said, “good-by, Goth!”
They shook hands gravely. Goth was the real Witch of Karres,
he decided—more so than her sisters, more so even than Toll,
But he hadn’t actually learned a single thing about any of them.
Peculiar people!
He walked on, rather glumly.
“Captain!” Goth called after him. He turned.
“Better watch those take-offs,” Goth called, “or you’ll kill
yourself yet!”
The captain cussed softly all the way up to the Venture.
And the take-off was terrible! A few swan hawks were watch¬
ing but, he hoped, no one else.
V.
There wasn’t the remotest possibility, of course, of resuming
direct trade in the Empire with the cargo they’d loaded for him.
But the more he thought about it now, the less likely it seemed
that Councilor Onswud was going to let a genuine fortune slip
through his hands on a mere technicality of embargoes. Nik-
keldepain knew all the tricks of interstellar merchandising; and
the councilor himself was undoubtedly the slickest unskinned
miffel in the Republic.
More hopefully, the captain began to wonder whether some
308
James H. Schmitz
sort of trade might not be made to develop eventually between
Karres and Nikkeldepain. Now and then, he also thought of
Maleen growing marriageable two years hence, Karres time. A
handful of witch-notes went tinkling through his head whenever
that idle reflection occurred.
The calendric chronometer informed him he’d spent three
weeks there. He couldn’t remember how their year compared
with the standard one.
He found he was getting remarkably restless on this homeward
run; and it struck him for the first time that space travel could
also be nothing much more than a large hollow period of boredom.
He made a few attempts to resume his sessions of small-talk with
Illyla, via her picture; but the picture remained aloof.
The ship seemed unnaturally quiet now—that was the trouble!
The captain’s cabin, particularly, and the hall leading past it had
become as dismal as a tomb.
But at long last, Nikkeldepain II swam up on the screen
ahead. The captain put the Venture 7333 on orbit, and broadcast
the ship’s identification number. Half an hour later. Landing
Control called him. He repeated the identification number, and
added the ship’s name, his name, owner’s name, place of origin
and nature of cargo.
The cargo had to be described in detail.
“Assume Landing Orbit 21,203 on your instruments,’* Land¬
ing Control instructed him. “A customs ship will come out to
inspect.’’
He went on the assigned orbit and gazed moodily from the
vision ports at the flat continents and oceans of Nikkeldepain II
as they drifted by below. A sense of equally flat depression
overcame him unexpectedly. He shook it off and remembered
Illyla.
Three hours later, a ship ran up next to him; and he shut off
the orbital drive. The communicator began buzzing. He switched
it on.
“Vision, please!’’ said an official-sounding voice. The captain
frowned, located the vision-stud of the communicator screen and
pushed it down. Four faces appeared in vague outline on the
screen, looking at him.
“Illyla!*’ the captain said.
“At least,’’ young Councilor Rapport said unpleasantly, “he’s
brought back the ship. Father Onswud!’’
“Illyla!’’ said the captain.
Councilor Onswud said nothing. Neither did Illyla. They both
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
309
seemed to be staring at him, but the screen wasn’t good enough
to permit the study of expression in detail.
The fourth face, an unfamiliar one above a uniform collar,
was the one with the official-sounding voice.
“You are instructed to open the forward lock, Captain Pausert,”
it said, “for an official investigation.”
It wasn’t till he was releasing the outer lock to the control
room that the captain realized it wasn’t Customs who had sent a
boat out to him, but the police of the Republic.
However, he hesitated for only a moment. Then the outer lock
gaped wide.
He tried to explain. They wouldn’t listen. They had come on
board in contamination-proof repulsor suits, all four of them; and
they discussed the captain as, if he weren’t there. Illyla looked
pale and angry and beautiful, and avoided looking at him.
However, he didn’t want to speak to her before the others
anyway.
They strolled back to the storage and gave the Karres cargo a
casual glance.
“Damaged his lifeboat, too!” Councilor Rapport remarked.
They brushed past him down the narrow hallway and went
back to the control room. The policeman asked to see the log and
commercial records. The captain produced them.
The three men studied them briefly. Illyla gazed stonily out at
Nikkeldepain D.
“Not too carefully kept!” the policeman pointed out.
“Surprising he bothered to keep them at all!” said Councilor
Rapport.
“But it’s all clear enough!” said Councilor Onswud.
They straightened up then and faced him in a line. Councilor
Onswud folded his arms and projected his craggy chin. Counci¬
lor Rapport stood at ease, smiling faintly. The policeman became
officially rigid.
Illyla remained off to one side, looking at the three.
“Captain Pausert,” the policeman said, “the following
charges—substantiated in part by this preliminary investigation—
are made against you—’ ’
“Charges?” said the captain.
“Silence, please!” rumbled Councilor Onswud.
“First: material theft of a quarter-million value of maels of
jewels and jeweled items from a citizen of the Imperial Planet of
Porlumma—’ ’
“They were returned!” the captain protested.
310
James H. Schmitz
“Restitution, particularly when inspired by fear of retribution,
does not affect the validity of the original charge,” Councilor
Rapport quoted, gazing at the ceiling.
“Second,” continued the policeman. “Purchase of human
slaves, permitted under Imperial law but prohibited by penalty of
ten years to lifetime penal servitude by the laws of the Republic
of Nikkeldepain—”
“I was just taking them back where they belonged!” said the
captain.
“We shall get to that point presently,” the policeman replied.
“Third, material theft of sundry items in the value of one
hundred and eighty thousand maels from a ship of the Imperial
Planet of Lepper, accompanied by threats of violence to the
ship’s personnel—”
“I might add in explanation of the significance of this particu¬
lar charge,” added Councilor Rapport, looking at the floor,
“that the Regency of Sirius, containing Lepper, is allied to the
Republic of Nikkeldepain by commercial and military treaties of
considerable value. The Regency has taken the trouble to point
out that such hostile conduct by a citizen of the Republic against
citizens of the Regency is likely to have an adverse effect on the
duration of the treaties. The charge thereby becomes compounded
by the additional charge of a treasonable act against the
Republic—”
He glanced at the captain. “I believe we can forestall the
accused’s plea that these pilfered goods also were restored. They
were, in the face of superior force!”
“Fourth,” the policeman went on patiently, “depraved and
licentious conduct while acting as commercial agent, to the
detriment of your employer’s business and reputation—”
“WHAT?” choked the captain.
“—involving three of the notorious Witches of the Prohibited
Planet of Karres—’ ’
“Just like his great-uncle Threbus!” nodded Councilor Onswud
gloomily. “It’s in the blood, I always say!”
“—and a justifiable suspicion of a prolonged stay on said
Prohibited Planet of Karres—”
“I never heard of that place before this trip!” shouted the
captain.
“Why don’t you read your Instructions and Regulations then?”
shouted Councilor Rapport. “It’s all there!”
“Silence, please!” shouted Councilor Onswud.
“Fifth,” said the policeman quietly, “general willful and
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
311
negligent actions resulting in material damage and loss to your
employer to the value of eighty-two thousand maels.”
‘Tve still got fifty-five thousand. And the stuff in the storage,”
the captain said, also quietly, “is worth half a million, at least!”
“Contraband and hence legally valueless!” the policeman
said. Councilor Onswud cleared his throat.
“It will be impounded, of course,” he said. “Should a method
of resale present itself, the profits, if any, will be applied to the
cancellation of your just debts. To some extent, that might
reduce your sentence.” He paused. “There is another matter—”
“The sixth charge,” the policeman said, “is the development
and public demonstration of a new type of space drive, which
should have been brought promptly and secretly to the attention
of the Republic of Nikkeldepain!”
They all stared at him—alertly and quite greedily.
So that was it—the Sheewash Drive!
“Your sentence may be greatly reduced, Pausert,” Councilor
Onswud said wheedlingly, “if you decide to be reasonable now.
What have you discovered?’ ’
“Look out, father!” Illyla said sharply.
“Pausert,” Councilor Onswud inquired in a fading voice,
“what is that in your hand?”
“A Blythe gun,” the captain said, boiling.
There was a frozen stillness for an instant. Then the policeman’s
right hand made a convulsive movement.
“Uh-uh!” said the captain wamingly.
Councilor Rapport started a slow step backwards.
“Stay where you are!” said the captain.
“Pausert!” Councilor Onswud and Illyla cried out together.
“Shut up!” said the captain.
There was another stillness.
“If you’d looked,” the captain said, in an almost normal
voice, “you’d have seen I’ve got the nova gun turrets out.
They’re fixed on that boat of yours. The boat’s lying still and
keeping its little yap shut. You do the same—”
He pointed a finger ai the policeman. “You got a repulsor suit
on,” he said. “Open the inner port lock and go squirt yourself
back to your boat!”
The inner port lock groaned open. Warm air left the ship in a
long, lazy wave, scattering the sheets of the Venture's log and
commercial records over the floor. The thin, cold upper atmo¬
sphere of Nikkeldepain II came eddying in.
“You next, Onswud!” the captain said.
312
James H. Schmitz
And a moment later: “Rapport, you just turn around—”
Young Councilor Rapport went through the port at a higher
velocity than could be attributed reasonably to his repulsor units.
The captain winced and rubbed his foot. But it had been worth
it.
“Pausert,” said Illyla in justifiable apprehension, “you are
stark, staring mad!”
“Not at all, my dear,” the captain said cheerfully. “You and
I are now going to take off and embark on a life of crime
together.”
“But, Pausert—”
“You’ll get used to it,” the captain assured her, “just like I
did. It’s got Nikkeldepain beat every which way.”
“Pausert,” Illyla said, whitefaced, “we told them to bring up
revolt ships!”
“We’ll blow them out through the stratosphere,” the captain
said belligerently, reaching for the port-control switch. He added,
“But they won’t shoot anyway while I’ve got you on board!”
Illyla shook her head. “You just don’t understand,” she said
desperately. “You can’t make me stay!”
“Why not?” asked the captain.
“Pausert,” said Illyla, “I am Madame Councilor Rapport.”
“Oh!” said the captain. There was a silence. He added,
crestfallen: “Since when?”
“Five months ago, yesterday,” said Illyla.
“Great Patham!” cried the captain, with some indignation.
“I’d hardly got off Nikkeldepain then! We were engaged!”
“Secretly . . . and I guess,” said Illyla, with a return of
spirit, “that I had a right to change my mind!”
There was another silence.
“Guess you had, at that,” the captain agreed. “All right—the
port’s still open, and your husband’s waiting in the boat. Beat
it!”
He was alone. He let the ports slam shut and banged down the
oxygen release switch. The air had become a little thin.
He cussed.
The communicator began rattling for attention. He turned it
on.
“Pausert!” Councilor Onswud was calling in a friendly but
shaking voice. “May we not depart, Pausert? Your nova guns
are still fixed on this boat!”
“Oh, that—” said the captain. He deflected the turrets a
trifle. “They won’t go off now. Scram!”
The police boat vanished.
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
313
There was other company coming, though. Far below him but
climbing steadily, a trio of revolt ships darted past on the screen,
swung around and came back for the next turn of their spiral.
They’d have to get a good deal closer before they started shooting;
but they’d try to stay under him so as not to knock any stray
chunks out of Nikkeldepain.
He sat a moment, reflecting. The revolt ships went by once
more. The captain punched in the Venture's secondary drives,
turned her nose towards the planet and let her go. There were
some scattered white puffs around as he cut through the revolt
ships’ plane of flight. Then he was below them, and the Venture
groaned as he took her out of the dive.
The revolt ships were already scattering and nosing over for a
counter-maneuver. He picked the nearest one and swung the
nova guns towards it.
“—and ram them in the middle!” he muttered between his
teeth.
SSS-whoosh!
It was the Sheewash Drive—but, like a nightmare now, it kept
on and on!
VI.
“Maleen!” the captain bawled, pounding at the locked door
of the captain’s cabin. “Maleen—shut it off! Cut it off! You’ll
kill yourself, Maleen!”
The Venture quivered suddenly throughout her length, then
shuddered more violently, jumped and coughed; and commenced
sailing along on her secondary drives again. He wondered how
many light-years from everything they were by now. It didn’t
matter!
“Maleen!” he yelled. “Are you all right?”
There was a faint thump-thump inside the cabin, and silence.
He lost almost a minute finding the right cutting tool in the
storage. A few seconds later, a section of door panel sagged
inwards; he caught it by one edge and came tumbling into the
cabin with it.
He had the briefest glimpse of a ball of orange-colored fire
swirling uncertainly over a cone of oddly bent wires. Then the
fire vanished, and the wires collapsed with a loose rattling to the
table top.
The crumpled small shape lay behind the table, which was
314
James H. Schmitz
why he didn’t discover it at once. He sagged to the floor beside
it, all the strength running out of his knees.
Brown eyes opened and blinked at him blearily.
“Sure takes it out of you!’’ Goth grunted. “Am I hungry?’’
“I’ll whale, the holy, howling tar out of you again,’’ the
captain roared, “if you ever—’’
“Quit your bawling!’’ snarled Goth. “I got to eat.*’
She ate for fifteen minutes straight, before she sank back in
her chair, and sighed.
“Have some more Wintenberry jelly,’’ the captain offered
anxiously. She looked pretty pale.
Goth shook her head. “Couldn’t—and that’s about the first
thing you’ve said since you fell through the door, howling for
Maleen. Ha-ha! Maleen’s got a boyfriend!’’
“Button your lip, child,’’ the captain said. “I was thinking.’’
He added, after a moment: “Has she really?’*
“Picked him out last year,’’ Goth nodded. “Nice boy from
town—they get married as soon as she’s marriageable. She just
told you to come back because she was upset about you. Maleen
had a premonition you were headed for awful trouble!’’
“She was quite right, little chum,’’ the captain said nastily.
“What were you thinking about?’’ Goth inquired.
“I was thinking,’’ said the captain, “that as soon as we’re
sure you’re going to be all right. I’m taking you straight back to
Karres!’’
“I’ll be all right now,’’ Goth said. “Except, likely, for a
stomach-ache. But you can’t take me back to Karres.’’
“Who will stop me, may I ask?’’ the captain asked.
“Karres is gone,’’ Goth said.
“Gone?’’ the captain repeated blankly, with a sensation of not
quite definable horror bubbling up in him.
“Not blown up or anything,’’ Goth reassured him. “They just
moved it! The Imperialists got their hair up about us again. But
this time, they were sending a fleet with the big bombs and stuff,
so everybody was called home. But they had to wait then till
they found out where we were—me and Maleen and the Leewit.
Then you brought us in; and they had to wait again, and decide
about you. But right after you’d left . . . we’d left, I mean . . .
they moved it.’’
“Where?’’
“Great Patham!’’ Goth shrugged. “How’d I know? There’s
lots of places!’’
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
315
There probably were, the captain admitted silently. A scene
came suddenly before his eyes—that lime-white, arenalike bowl
in the valley, with the steep tiers of seats around it, just before
they’d reached the town of Karres—“the Theater where—”
But now there was unnatural night-darkness all over and about
that world; and the eight thousand-some Witches of Karres sat in
circles around the Theater, their heads bent towards one point in
the center, where orange fire washed hugely about the peak of a
cone of curiously twisted girders.
And a world went racing off at the speeds of the Sheewash
Drive! There’d be lots of places, all right. What peculiar people!
“Anyway,” he sighed, “if Fve got to start raising you—don’t
say ‘Great Patham’ any more. That’s a cuss word!”
“I learned it from you!” Goth pointed out.
“So you did, I guess,” the captain acknowledged. “I won’t
say it either. Aren’t they going to be worried about you?”
“Not very much,” said Goth. “We don’t get hurt often—
especially when we’re young. That’s when we can do all that
stuff like teleporting, and whistling, like the Leewit. We lose it
mostly when we get older—they’re working on that now so we
won’t. About all Maleen can do right now is premote!”
“She promotes just dandy, though,” the captain said. “The
Sheewash Drive—they can all do that, can’t they?”
“Uh-huh!” Goth nodded. “But that’s learned stuff. That’s
one of the things they already studied out.” She added, a trace
uncomfortably: “I can’t tell you about that till you’re one
yourself.”
“Till I’m what myself?” the captain asked, becoming puzzled
again.
“A witch, like us,” said Goth. “We got our rules. And that
won’t be for four years, Karres time.”
“It won’t, eh?” said the captain. “What happens then?”
“That’s when I’m marriageable age,” said Goth, frowning at
the jar of Wintenberry jelly. She pulled it towards her and
inspected it carefully. “I got it all fixed,’’ she told the jelly
firmly, “as soon as they started saying they ought to pick out a
wife for you on Karres, so you could stay. I said it was me, right
away; and everyone else said finally that was all right then—
even Maleen, because she had this boy friend.”
“You mean?” said the captain, stunned, “this was all planned
out on Karres?”
“Sure,” said Goth. She pushed the jelly back where it had
been standing, and glanced up at him again. “For three weeks,
316
James H. Schmitz
that’s about all everyone talked about in the town! It set a
perceedent—”
She paused doubtfully.
“That would explain it,’’ the captain admitted.
“Uh-huh,” Goth nodded relieved, settling back in her chair.
“But it was my father who told us how to do it so you’d break
up with the people on Nikkeldepain. He said it was in the
blood.’*
“What was in the blood?’’ the captain said patiently.
“That you’d break up with them. That’s Threbus, my father,’’
Goth informed him. “You met him a couple of times in the
town. Big man with a blond beard—Maleen and the Leewit take
after him.’’
“You wouldn’t mean my great-uncle Threbus?’’ the captain
inquired. He was in a state of strange calm by now.
“That’s right,’’ said Goth. “He liked you a lot.’’
“It’s a small Galaxy,’’ said the captain philosophically. “So
that’s where Threbus wound up! I’d like to meet him again some
day.’’
“We’ll start after Karres four years from now, when you learn
about those things,’’ Goth said. “We’ll catch up with them all
right. That’s still thirteen hundred and seventy-two Old Sidereal
days,’’ she added, “but there’s a lot to do in between. You want
to pay the money you owe back to those people, don’t you? I got
some ideas—’’
“None of those teleporting tricks now!’’ the captain warned.
“Kid stuff!’’ Goth said scornfully. “I’m growing up. This’ll
be fair swapping. But we’ll get rich.’’
“I wouldn’t be surprised,’’ the captain admitted. He thought a
moment. “Seeing we’ve turned out to be distant relatives, I
suppose it is all right, too, if I adopt you meanwhile—’’
“Sure,’* said Goth. She stood up.
“Where you going?’’ the captain asked.
“Bed,’’ said Goth. “I’m tired.’’ She stopped at the hall door.
“About all I can tell you about us till then,’’ she said, “you can
read in those Regulations, like the one man said—the one you
kicked off the ship. There’s a lot about us in there. Lots of lies,
too, though!”
“And when did you find out about the communicator between
here and the captain’s cabin?” the captain inquired.
Goth grinned. “A while back,” she admitted. “The others
never noticed!”
THE WITCHES OF KARRES
317
“All right,” the captain said. “Good night, witch—if you get
a stomach-ache, yell and I’ll bring the medicine.”
“Good night,” Goth yawned. “I will, I think.”
“And wash behind your ears!” the captain added, trying to
remember the bedtime instructions he’d overheard Maleen giving
the junior witches.
“All right,*’ said Goth sleepily. The hall door closed behind
her—but half a minute later, it was briskly opened again. The
captain looked up startled from the voluminous stack of “General
Instructions and Space Regulations of the Republic of Nikkelde-
pain” he’d just discovered in one of the drawers of the control
desk. Goth stood in the doorway, scowling and wide-awake.
“And you wash behind yours!” she said.
“Huh?” said the captain. He reflected a moment. “All right,”
he said. “We both will, then.”
“Right,” said Goth, satisfied.
The door closed once more.
The captain began to run his finger down the lengthy index of
K’s—or could it be under W?
Don’t miss the great novels of Dray Prescot on Kregen,
world of Antares!
□ A LIFE FOR KREGEN
□ A SWORD FOR KREGEN
□ A FORTUNE FOR KREGEN
□ VICTORY FOR KREGEN
□ BEASTS OF ANTARES
□ REBEL OF ANTARES
□ LEGIONS OF ANTARES
□ MANHOUNDS & ARENA OF ANTARES
□ ALLIES OF ANTARES
□ MAZES OF SCORPIO
□ FIRES OF SCORPIO
□ DELIA OF VALLIA
□ TRANSIT TO SCORPIO
□ TALONS OF SCORPIO
(#UE1456—$1.75)
(#UJ 1485—$1.95)
(#UJ 1505—$1.95)
(#UJ1532—$1.95)
(#UJ1555—$1.95)
(#UJ1582—$1.95)
(#UE1648—$2.25)
(#UE1650—$2.75)
(#UE1671—$2.25)
(#UE1739—$2.25)
(#UE1816—$2.50)
(#UE1784—$2.35)
(#UE1820—$2.50)
(#UE 1886—$2.50)
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
P.O. Box 999, Birgenfitld, New Jersey 07621
Please send me the DAW BOOKS I have checked above. I am enclosing
$_(check or money order—no currency or C.O.D.’s).
Please include the list price plus $1.00 per order to cover handling
costs.
Name_
Address_ ; _
City_State_Zip Code_
Please allow at least 4 weeks for delivery
PHILIP K. DICK
"The greatest American novelist of the second half of the
20th Century."
—Norman Spinrad
"A genius ... He writes it the way he sees it and it is the
quality, the clarity of his Vision that makes him great.”
—Thomas M. Disch
“The most consistently brilliant science fiction writer in the
world."
—John Brunner
PHILIP K. DICK
In print again, in DAW Books’ special memorial editions:
□ WE CAN BUILD YOU (#UE1793—$2.50)
□ THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH
(#UE1810—$2.50)
□ A MAZE OF DEATH (#UE1830—$2.50)
□ UBIK (#UE1859—$2.50)
□ DEUS IRAE (#UE1887—$2.50)
□ NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR (#UE1654—$2.50)
□ FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID (#UE1624—$2.25)
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY,
P.O. Box 999, Bortenfield, New Jersey 07621
Please send me the DAW BOOKS I have checked above. I am enclosing
$_(check or money order—no currency or C.O.D.’s).
Please include the list price plus $1.00 per order to cover handling
costs.
Name_
Address_
City_State_Zip Code-
Please allow at least 4 weeks for delivery
Presenting C. J. CHERRYH
□ DOWNBELOW STATION. A blockbuster of a novel! Interstellar
warfare as humanity's colonies rise in cosmic rebellion.
(#UE1594—$2.75)
□ SERPENT’S REACH. Two races lived in harmony in a quar¬
antined constellation—until one person broke the truce!
(#UE1682—$2.50)
□ THE PRIDE OF CHANUR. "Immensely successful . . . Tour de
force . . . This is quintessential SF. . . .”—Algis Budrys.
(#UE1695—$2.95)
□ HUNTER OF WORLDS. Triple fetters of the mind served
to keep their human prey bondage to this city-sized star-
ship. (#UE1559—$2.25)
□ BROTHERS OF EARTH. This in-depth novel of an alien world
and a human who had to adjust or die was a Science Fiction
Book Club Selection. (#UJ 1470—$1.95)
□ THE FADED SUN: KESRITH. Universal praise for this novel of
the last members of humanity’s warrior-enemies . . . and the
Earthman who was fated to save them. (#UE1692—$2.50)
□ THE FADED SUN: SHON’JIR. Across the untracked stars to the
forgotten world of the Mri go the last of that warrior race and
the man who had betrayed humanity. (#UE1753—$2.50)
□ THE FADED SUN: KUTATH. The final and dramatic conclu¬
sion of this bestselling trilogy—with three worlds in militant
confrontation. (#UE1743—$2.50)
□ THE DREAMSTONE. A marvelous fantasy of the last strong¬
hold of Faerie. (#UE1808—$2.75)
□ THE TREE OF SWORDS AND JEWELS. The final showdown
between Magick and the Iron Swords.(#UE1850—$2.95)
NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
P.O. Box 999, Bergenfield, New Jersey 07621
Please send me the DAW BOOKS I have checked above. I am enclosing
$_(check or money order—no currency or C.O.D.’s).
Please include the list price plus $1.00 per order to cover handling
costs.
Name ■ _
Address_
City_State_:_Zip Code_
Please allow at least 4 weeks for delivery
ASIMOV SELECTS
"This series continues to uncover and
reprint classics in the science fiction genre
that are a treat for SF readers of^ll ages
... a compact and authoritative survey of
science fiction's finest stories."
—McNaughton Book Service
"The collection of stories from the same
period gives a flavor of that period that can't
be obtained any other way. As a history
of the genre and a mirror of the time, it's
impossible to beat for the price."
—W.D. Stevens,
Science Fiction 8e Fantasy Book Review
Relive the mythic moments of 1949 with
the now-legendary giants of yesterday and
today: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke,
Clifford D. Simak, C.M. Kornbiuth, Theodore
Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Henry Kuttner,
James H. Schmitz and more!
0
71125
00350
IS3N O-ATITP-llfl-b
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American Libraries
TV News
Understanding 9/11